Pumpkin Pie Blondies

This recipe smells and tastes like Thanksgiving. Actually, it smells and tastes like pumpkin pie, which is what you eat at Thanksgiving, so I think that is the connection. The beautiful thing about Pumpkin Pie Blondies is that you have a moist, slightly dense blondie surrounding and swirled with pumpkin pie that tastes, if I do say so myself, better than Costco's pumpkin pie.

Sounds like a small compliment, but I think Costco's pumpkin pie is pretty near perfect. About 9.5 on a scale of 1-10 based on taste, texture, and its floor routine. Trader Joe's Pumpkin Pie that you just thaw and serve is a 10.0. (Its performance on the bar is outstanding.) Seriously though, my Pumpkin Pie Blondies deserve a Spinal Tap 11.

I discovered this great recipe for Cream Cheese Blondies a few years ago in Martha Stewart's Cookies and I fell in love with it. These blondies are, again, some of my trigger foods. I shared them with my friend Alicia, the baker upstairs, and we brainstormed to make them pumpkin. The results were delicious and they were appropriately named Pumpkin Cream Cheese Blondies.

Aside: Having a best friend who loves to bake and talk about food as much as I do is one of the greatest blessings of my life. She is also talented, intelligent, a really great photographer, and she pays attention to detail which makes her blog simply beautiful. The fact that she lives 5 minutes away makes swapping food successes even better. She's the ant- Here is a Pumpkin Cream Cheese Blondie in an adorable treat box tied with matching baking string;  and I'm the grasshopper- Oh crap! I-want-you-to-try-this-treat-that-I-just-pulled-out-of-the-oven-and-I'll-wad-it-up-in-a-paper-towel-because-I'm-out-of-baggies-and-paper-plates-sorry-if-it-is-smushed! End of Aside

This year, I wanted to try again. I knew that pumpkin and cream cheese are made for each other. Cream cheese and blondies are made for each other. So, logically, pumpkin and blondies are made for each other. But how to make it work? Martha Stewart's blondies needed no improvement, and adding pumpkin to the actual blondies change the consistency of the whole bar. So, the pumpkin needed to go in the filling, but I wanted the pumpkin to headline this show, not the cream cheese. I doubled the pumpkin, added a slightly intense amount of cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and ginger. I ended up with pumpkin pie layered inside a blondie! 

The swirling looks complicated, but really when the Pumpkin Pie Blondies are baked up, any attempt at swirling is adequate. This recipe makes quite a bite of pumpkin pie "filling", so if you don't use all of it and need to eat the last 1/2 cup with a spoon out of the bowl, you just do what you need to do.

Happy pumpkin season, friends! I now present Little Red Hen's Pumpkin Pie Blondies! May they haunt all of your holiday dreams and be at every party or dinner from now until the New Year!

Pumpkin Pie Blondies

Ingredients:

For the blondies:

• 9 tbs butter, room temperature 
• 1 cup packed light brown sugar
• 2 eggs 
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 2/3 cups flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt

For the Pumpkin Pie Filling:

• 6 oz cream cheese, room temperature
• 2 tbs butter
•  1 egg
• 1/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup pumpkin puree 
• 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 2 tbs flour
• 2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1/4 tsp ground cloves
• 1/2 tsp ground ginger

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Line an 8x8 baking pan with parchment paper.
2. Make the blondie batter: In a medium sized bowl, cream the butter and brown sugar until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. 
3. Add the vanilla and 2 eggs. Cream until combined.
4. Add the flour, baking powder, and salt. Mix until well combined.
5. Make the Pumpkin Pie Filling: In a medium sized bowl, beat the cream cheese, butter, egg, sugar, spices, and flour with an electric mixture until smooth. 
6. Put half of the blondie batter  into the pan and spread evenly with a spatula or fingers. Pour 2/3 of the pumpkin pie filling on top of the blondie batter.
7. Drop the remaining blondie batter by spoonfuls on top of the pumpkin and spread across the top. (It'll be a bit messy :). 
8. Top with remaining pumpkin filling, dropping in dollops on the blondie batter. Using a butter knife, lightly cut the pumpkin filling into the blondie batter, creating a swirl pattern. (If it looks a smushed up, don't worry.) 
   
   
   
9. Bake for 60 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the blondies comes out clean, with just a few little crumbs attached. 
10. Let cool in pan for about 20 minutes, then lift parchment paper and blondies out of pan. Continue to cool completely before cutting, if you can wait. :)

Bake the bread. Share the slices.