So I've never really been a follower of Martha Stuart, but after my little adventure I might have to reconsider my feelings towards her. I love pumpkin, I love chocolate, and I love recipes that require more than two bowls. Not that I love washing them, but I derive a certain pleasure from the process of baking and if there's something that will prolong that process and improve the taste, I'm in favor of trying it. So when I found a Martha Stuart Pumpkin Chocolate Brownie Swirl recipe, I figured I'd give it a go.
The list of ingredients is not quite daunting, though it is a bit longer than most brownie recipes. After having made it, I'd probably make a few changes to the recipe. I found it on the Smitten Kitchen blog (here's the direct link) but the following is my own slightly altered version. I'm including alterations I'd make if I were to do it again. If you try it and it doesn't work, feel free to blame it on me. There are plenty of other things to blame failure on though, so I encourage you to try the blame on them first, but I guess I'm a good third or fourth scapegoat.
Anyway, here's the ingredient list if you're making it in a 9x13 inch baking pan. Also, I would say this is more of a cake than a brownie, despite what Martha and Smitten seem to think. We clearly have differing opinions of what constitutes a brownie.
Ingredients:
1 cup butter or margarine (for those of you afraid of cholesterol or dairy)
12 oz (1 regular size bag) semisweet chocolate chips
3 1/4 cup flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp salt
2 1/4 cup sugar
6 eggs plus 2 egg whites (or 8 eggs if you can stomach cracking that many eggs into one dessert)
2 Tb vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups pumpkin puree (about 1 1/2 cans)
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ground nutmeg
1 cup chocolate chips (extra for mixing in, not to be confused with what you're melting)
1/2 cup chopped pecans
First preheat the oven to 350 degrees. I forgot to do this until halfway through which was fine, because this recipe takes a while to make and our oven heats up fast. But all recipes start with preheating the oven, so there's no real reason to do this one any differently.
Next mix together in a bowl the eggs, vanilla extract and sugar beating until you get a pretty foamy layer on top. Five minutes with electric beaters, or three if you're impatient like myself. It should look something like this:
Now go get a pan (don't try it in the microwave, you are likely to burn the chocolate, trust me I've done it enough times) and melt the butter and chocolate over the stove until smooth. It should look something like Willy Wonka's chocolate river. Or the picture below:
Now mix the flour, baking powder, cayenne pepper, and salt together in a bowl. I hate doing this and usually just add all the dry ingredients into the wet at once. But you're going to need the second bowl later anyway, so with this recipe you might as well.
Good, now you're going to beat the flour mixture into the egg mixture in batches until it's all nicely combined like this:
Doesn't that just make you want to start baking this recipe immediately? It just looks so darn tasty. God, I'm starting to want to make it all over again just posting these pictures. But I guess I should finish my post first.
So now you're going to split this batter between your two bowls (see, I wasn't lying when I said you'd need it anyway). I didn't read the whole recipe before I started to make it and at this point realized I should have just mixed the dry ingredients together in the second bowl to begin with. Ah well, live and learn.
Now that you've split the batter, you're going to pour the chocolate mixture into one of the bowls and beat it in with the batter. You will likely begin to drool at this point, so I suggest wearing a face mask. Learning to shut your mouth when cooking might also work, but I have yet to master that technique. Now try not to drool on your laptop, but this is what it should look like:
Great, so now you're going to add the pumpkin, oil, cinnamon, and nutmeg to the other bowl of batter and beat it all together. Side by side it looks like these lovely ladies:
Now I think things could always use chocolate chips, so I would recommend adding a cup of chocolate chips to the chocolate bowl. You could really put them in either, but the chocolate chips might dim the orange/brown contrast of batters if there's already brown in the orange batter. I think I might have made that sentence unnecessarily complicated. I'm going to assume you're smart enough to piece out my meaning.
Now you're going to grease a 9x13 pan and pour half the chocolate batter into the bottom of the pan. Top it with half the pumpkin batter. It looks like this:
Spread it evenly across the chocolate bottom, and then put down another chocolate layer and a final pumpkin layer. Using a knife, swirl it around until you get the marbling effect you wanted:
Sprinkle the pecans on top and bake for about an hour, but check on it at 45 minutes in case your oven is much faster than mine. When it's done it will look like this:
And it will taste like this:
YUM!!!
Actually, I thought it was just ok but everyone else seemed to love it and it was gone by the end of Saturday afternoon so I guess something went right. Perhaps it's because I have a different expectation of brownies. I want them to be moist and not at all spongy, so this was a bit too cake-like for me. But With my suggested alterations (more sugar, less flour, added chocolate chips) I think it will be a bit more brownie-esque. But really, I like pleasing others with my food just as much as I like pleasing myself, so in that regard it really was a success.
In other exciting news, my sister just bought me a new copy of my favorite dessert cookbook (I long ago wore my last copy to pieces) so when I return to DC I will attempt to bake everything from the book I haven't tried before. There isn't much, but I'm giving it all a shot. That means you have some donuts and several candies coming at you in the next few weeks. Get excited! I certainly am.
No comments:
Post a Comment