Christmas Baking - Week 2

So I just finished Seven Soup Sunday and I'm pooped.  Thankfully I was able to sit down long enough to type the last post.

I'm not a quitter, I will make it all 7 weeks to Christmas with this Sunday baking crap.  Sometimes I don't know why I do this to myself.

Either way...onto Week 2's Baking Adventure: using chocolate.

Have I mentioned that I've never baked from scratch until last week?  Yea, I was a cheater.  Even when commissioned to make birthday cakes I used box mix and "doctored" it up to make it work for my application.

Geoff's 30th Birthday Cake

Ok, so back to the chocolate.  Since I'm on this pumpkin kick (it's on sale right now) I searched for a recipe with chocolate and pumpkin.  Found one.


Pumpkin Cheesecake Swirl Brownies

Ingredients:

2 eggs, at room temperature
6 tablespoons butter, melted and cooled
1 cup flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
1/4 cup canned pumpkin
2 tablespoons butter
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
8 oz cream cheese, at room temperature
3 oz unsweetened chocolate 

Directions:

1.) Preheat Oven to 350.  Grease a 9x13in pan.

2.) In a double boiler, melt the chocolate and the 2tbsp butter

3.) In a medium bowl, beat the eggs and sugars together until fluffy.

4.) Add the vanilla and melted butter then mix thouroughly

5.) Add baking powder.  Then add flour in small amounts and mix until smooth.

6.) Separate the batter into two separate bowls.

  

7.) Add the melted chocolate to one of the bowls of batter, mix.  Then add the cream cheese, nutmeg and pumpkin to the other bowl of batter, mix.

8.) Pour the pumpkin batter into the pan.  Then drop spoonfuls of the chocolate batter on top. (I used my scooper from Pampered Chef)

9.) Using a knife, swirl the chocolate batter into the pumpkin batter.

10.) Bake for 20 minutes, then check for doneness with a toothpick in the center.

YUMMMMMMM!

This one is really good...next time I'll need to swirl a little more!