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. 
those look good too. Are homemade butterfingers next? I have a recipe I’m going to try out soon.
Butterfingers would be tasty, but I’ve got something else coming on Friday…
OH YUM! I really want to try these but I’m horrible at dipping things too.
This is exactly what my son’s been asking me to do. You’re making it hard to say no – they look perfect!
Why do you tempt me so? Milky Ways are my favorites. This is so worth trying 🙂
Yum these look delicious! I love Milky ways
Well they look pretty perfect to me! And super delicious too.
I’m so intrigued by the cool whip/chocolate mixture for the filling! These look so yummy and addicting!
These look so cute and much easier than the milky ways and snickers I made a few months ago. I made mine in muffin wrappers so I didn’t dip them, just layered the chocolate, nougat, caramel, and chocolate! They came out pretty tasty but was a lot of work!
I just tried these and they didn’t come out as I’d hoped. The chocolate and whipped cream mix was too sticky and wouldn’t harden. Did I do something wrong? Also what if you can’t find kraft caramel?
Rachael – Sorry to hear they didn’t turn out for you. The center part was a bit sticky while dipping and wasn’t super hard… Any caramel would work for this recipe, I just use the Kraft kind that comes individually wrapped.
I would put melted chocolate in the pan first, freeze, then the chocolate mixture, then the caramel. Then you can spoon melted chocolate on top. Would this work? (It solves the dipping problem too!)
beantownbaker — November 3rd, 2013 @ 12:36 pm
That could definitely work… The caramel might ooze out when you gut them though… Let me know how it goes if you try it.
I hope you are not using Cool Whip which is all trans-fat and high fructose corn syrup. I’m looking for a healthier alternative to the store bought Milky Way. Perhaps a recipe for homemade whip ?
These were a DISASTER. I wasted my morning and a lot of ingredients. The chocolate mixture was so sticky when cutting into squares. The directions did not state whether to add water to the caramels when melting so I didn’t…the caramels ended up thick and so sticky, I had trouble putting it on the chocolate layer. Dumped the whole mess out since I didn’t want to waste a bag of milk chocolate chips to coat them. I have been baking my entire life (60 +) and never had a recipe go like that.
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