I haven’t been writing about food, lately. With the holidays approaching, however, I have to pick up some speed, I think.

It is my mother’s 85th birthday tomorrow! Of course, I am baking my lekach for her, as she likes it a lot. My mother is like our family lekach – strong and not pretentious on the outside, soft, yet firm inside. She is the true backbone of our family – for all of us the one person that we all can rely upon with a 100% certainty. May we merit to have her presence with us for many years to come.

Since Thanksgiving is coming along and Shabbat right after it, I decided to start early on my deserts, and experiment with them a bit, a usual thing for me.

This time I made healthy brownies – with pumpkin puree and chocolate. As it often happens, I found a recipe in the blogosphere, and amended it to my taste. Hopefully, to the tastes of the guests too 🙂

Brownies are very easy to make ahead. I, personally, am not in love with them, but I find that most of the born – Americans and younger generation of immigrants love anything chocolate. So that’s why I made them.

Here’s the recipe:

4 oz good quality dark chocolate

about a cup sugar (I use cane or raw sugar)

1/3 cup butter

1 cup pumpkin puree

2 eggs

1-2 tsp vanilla depending on your taste

3/ 4 cup whole wheat flour

1 tsp pumpkin spice (I make my own right on the go – 3 parts ground cinnamon, 2 parts ground ginger, 2 parts ground nutmeg, 1 part ground allspice, 1 part ground cloves)

1 tsp baking powder

a pinch of sea salt

A bit of sliced almonds

 

Melt your chocolate with butter in a bain-marie stirring all the time. The mixture should be nice and glossy. Stir in sugar and pumpkin puree.

Take off the heat and stir eggs and vanilla extract.

In a separate bowl mix all your dry ingredients.

Pour your wet ingredients into the dry ones and gently stir to mix. Try not to overdo it.

The mixture will be nice and shiny. Add some sliced almonds to the mix if you are a nut like me and can’t live without nuts.

Pour the batter into a baking dish lined with parchment paper. I love to use glass baking dishes for this, but you may have a different preference.

Bake at 350F for about 35 minutes. Try with a wooden toothpick. It should come out almost dry.

I also made a frosting for my brownies just as a part of the experiment.

I took

1/4 cup almond butter

2 tbsp pumpkin puree

2 tbsp maple syrup

2 tbsp almond milk

1 tsp vanilla extract

less than 1/2 tsp pumpkin spice

Just mix everything together to the desired consistency using a bit more or less almond milk.

The brownies have to be cooled before frosting. After that I just cut them and sneaked one to try. It is much lighter that your usual brownie, but very nice! They are sitting in my fridge now awaiting the verdict of my guests.

Also the frosting doesn’t turn out the best color, but is really tasty with all that maple syrup.

 

 

I also made some coconut chocolate truffles, but took the whole recipe from here

Enjoy!