Today my 16 year old daughter passed her driver road test, so I have a new driver (and higher insurance premiums!) in my house. To celebrate her success, Martha and I thought we would whip up a little something.

Over the weekend, Martha sent me a Halloween email of the day with the recipe for Pumpkin Swirl Brownies. I had all the ingredients (ok, mostly – I may have cheated and used chocolate chips instead of bittersweet baking chocolate), so it seemed like a quick little midweek snack to make.

Chocolate melted in the microwave

I started with melting the chocolate. Martha wanted me to melt it with the butter over a bowl of hot water. Sigh. Sorry Martha – I just popped it in the microwave for about a minute and 15 seconds and then stirred and I was all set.

Batter base

Martha then had me make the batter base. I confess I did not whisk the dry ingredients in a separate bowl. I just dumped them into the wet ones. If I had whisked them first, I would already have been up to 3 bowls – 4 if you count the one she wanted hot water in.

Chocolate batter

Pumpkin batter

Ok, so next I separated the batter so that I ended up with a pumpkin mixture and a chocolate mixture. I cheated again.

I did not put the batter in yet another bowl (making that bowl #5) and add the chocolate to it. I dumped the batter into the chocolate and stirred.

Swirled and ready

The layering of the batters was not easy. They never smooth over each other very well for me. The swirling part is fun. I didn’t add nuts since my son doesn’t like them.

Now for the taste test results. Ready? I didn’t like this! It did not taste like chocolate and it did not taste like pumpkin, so I’m not sure what exactly it tasted like. It was also very moist – disturbingly so.

Ready to eat

It was done though – the bottom was getting dark and so was the top. It was moist in the way a pumpkin pie is moist, but that just seemed weird in a brownie.

Sorry Martha – not a good thing.

Want a bite?