Pumpkin Spice Cheesecake Brownies
Fall has definitely arrived! With all the delicious soups, chili, and baking with apples and pumpkin, it’s by far the most fun food season. These bars have popped up all over the Internet after showing up in Cara’s blog two years ago. Hubby has been asking for these bars for about two weeks now. With the shortage of canned pumpkin going on right now, I couldn’t make these until now because I just couldn’t find canned pumpkin!
I made these when we had some overnight guests and everyone loved them. We got impatient and cut them after they had cooled for about a hour. They hadn’t been chilled so they were still a bit gooey and warm. They’re delicious at this point and also after they’ve been chilled (the pumpkin flavor really shines once they’ve chilled).
I made a few adjustments to Cara’s recipe. One of the bloggers who made these said she wished there was more of the pumpkin mixture, so I upped that part of the recipe. Cara’s original recipe called for 6 oz of cream cheese and since a block of cream cheese is 8 oz, I just adjusted the other ingredients of the cheesecake portion so that it would use a full block of cream cheese. My adjustments are shown below.
I also don’t tend to think of pumpkin and chocolate together. It seems to me that white chocolate or cream cheese frosting are natural partners with pumpkin. The more I thought about it, the more I thought that dark chocolate would pair with pumpkin better than milk chocolate. So in the brownie portion of these bars, I used some dark cocoa.
Pumpkin Spice Cheesecake Brownies
Yield: 16 bars
Ingredients:
For the Brownie Batter
3/4 cup butter, melted
1 cup sugar
1 tbsp pure vanilla extract
2 eggs
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup dark cocoa powder
1/4 tsp salt
2 tsp cinnamon
For the Cheesecake Batter
8 oz cream cheese, softened
1 egg
1/2 cup sugar
2 Tbsp + 2 tsp flour
2/3 cup pumpkin puree
1/3 tsp pure vanilla
2/3 tsp cinnamon
1/3 tsp ground ginger
1/3 tsp ground cloves
Directions:
Preheat oven to 350F. Grease an 8x8" square metal baking pan.
Beat together melted butter, sugar, and vanilla, then beat in eggs one at a time. Combine dry ingredients and then gradually stir into butter mixture with a wooden spoon. In separate bowl, beat together cheesecake batter ingredients.
Spread about 2/3 of chocolate batter into prepared pan, and spoon cheesecake batter over. Dollop remaining brownie batter over cheesecake batter. Swirl the batters together by running a butter knife back and forth through the pan.
Bake for 40 minutes, or until center is set. Cool completely on wire rack and chill before cutting and serving.
Original Beantown Baker Recipe, inspired by Cara's Cravings
I am Jen the Beantown Baker. Engineer by day and baking maven by night. Hubby serves as my #1 fan and official taste tester. We got hitched back in 2006. Barefoot. In the sand. With the waves crashing behind us. It was one of the best decisions we’ve ever made. 
The pops are so cute!! Love the colors you used to decorate them with.
Thanks! I just wanted something springy and fun.
Looks adorable!!
These look amazing! Great job. I don’t know if I’d have the patience 🙂
It really helped to break it out into steps. And the help from Hubby was big. If I had to do all 80 of them myself, I probably would have given up half way through…
Holy cow… 80 of them?! You’re a trooper!
Those turned out great though!
They’re SO cute! I love all the different sprinkles you used!
Those are just too cute…and tempting!
Those are incredible!!! great job!!!
Very pretty! I’ve seen those brownie molds. I’m waiting to grab one when I get one of those 40% off coupons.
Glad to hear your MIL had a wonderful party.
~ingrid
Very cute! These look great!
What a cute idea! I love all the bright colors!
Lovely job! Thank you for posting my link. I like your color combination and the flower pots for displaying the brownie pops. Very creative!!
Have you ever tried to freeze them after you dipped them in chocolate? I am thinking of making some for a wedding but wouldn’t have time to dip them on the day of the event.
Lisa, I have not done that for brownie pops before. But I have frozen cake balls which are also covered in chocolate. I would assume it would work just fine. You could always make a small batch to test it out. Definitely let me know how it goes!