What My Taste Buds Are Thankful For This Year!

I've been accused of using this blog to promote and propagandize the global domination of the Illuminati and their Union foot soldiers, so in the spirit of the holiday season I thought I'd back off a bit to promote something undeniably good and honorable, unless of course you're a pumpkin hater!

Two weekends before Halloween my family was visiting my aunt's outside Doylestown, PA, and went pumpkin picking at one of the local farms that also had a market and bakery. Now I have more of a sweet tooth than I'd care to admit, especially pumpkin pie, and they didn't have just pumpkin pie, they had a table full of pumpkin pastries. Of course I had to try them all; pie, tart, crumb cake, fudge, but the winner, the most irresistible was the pumpkin brownie! Somewhere between bread and pie, it was a sweet, moist, dense, cream cheese slathered 5"x5" block of pure bliss. I had to eat five of them on top of the other desserts just to make sure it wasn't a fluke. A lot of high praise and sweet talk scored me the recipe and last night was the first attempt at recreating the Pieta of pumpkin based confectionary. Usually when I cook or bake I make it up as I go which makes repeating successful experiments nearly impossible much to the chagrin of my wife. Once I made a pretty amazing Balsamic Chicken, her very favorite, with lemon, diced tomato, and drizzled egg that I've never been able to reproduce. For these brownie's I stayed as true as possible:

Cream 1/2# butter and 2 cups of dark brown sugar

Blend in 2 eggs, 2 cups solid pak pumpkin, 1/4 tsp salt, 1/4 tbs baking powder, 1/2 tbs cinnamon ( anytime cinnamon is called for I quadruple it ), 1/4 tsp ginger, 1/2 tsp cloves, 2 cups of flour, 1/2 tbs orange extract, dash of vanilla ( my addition since every recipe should have a dash of something! )

Spread into a greased and floured brownie pan and cook at 325 until you can poke it with a toothpick and it comes out clean.

For the cinnamon cream cheese frosting mix 1/2 cup of butter and 12 oz of cream cheese, 2 cups confectioner's sugar, 1 tsp cinnamon ( or 4! ), 1 tsp vanilla

Then I heat the frosting up slowly until it's liquid enough to drizzle and enjoy, but if you're like me have a trusted friend or relative hide the brownies you don't plan to eat!