Cooking with Jon & Steph - Pumpkin Patch Brownies

While looking for fun Halloween baking ideas on Pinterest recently, I came across this gem:

It looked and sounded amazing! But when I couldn't find the candy corn Hershey's kisses ANYWHERE, I decided to improvise with these fall favorites:

Jon doesn't even like these candy pumpkins, but he LOVED these brownies!

First, you mix the shortbread dough together. The Pinterest/blog recipe has this. It was super easy! Cream together butter and sugar, then add flour and a pinch of salt until doughy.

Then you press it into the bottom of a pan. I found this easiest to do with my fingers :)

I decided this was like the "patch" for my candy pumpkins.

 I lined the shortbread with the pumpkin cuties so that there would be about 1 per brownie. If I were to make these again (which we WILL) I would put in twice as many pumpkins.

I covered the pumpkins with this delicious Ghirardelli double chocolate brownie mix.

I have since learned that there is a TRIPLE chocolate brownie version of this. But seriously, this dessert is so rich, double was plenty!

I mediated all of the baking times from the Pinterest recipe and the back of the box. We baked our brownies in this 12x8" pan for 45 minutes and that was PERFECT.

Over the stovetop, we melted 1.5 cups semi sweet chocolate chips with 3/4 cups heavy whipping cream in a double boiler to make a chocolate ganache for the top, because I just thought that sounded better than melting down candies for the top like the Pinterest recipe suggested. And I hate store bought frosting in a can.

We poured/spread the ganache over the top of the brownies right after they came out of the oven and it bubbled a little at the edges, sealing in the amazingness of chocolate overload.

 

Even though I had to scrape the ganache off the top of mine and let Jon have it, I thought these were DELICIOUS!! (Don't worry, I braved it a couple days later with some lactaid pills, and it is SOOOOO good. And I didn't even get sick. These brownies are a miracle!)

I loved that I renamed them and they ended up being "pumpkin patch brownies" because we ate them after Family Home Evening while watching The Nightmare Before Christmas after we went to the pumpkin patch. It was perfect! I'm pretty sure that these will be made EVERY October from now on.

The best part is they are fantastic warm or cold. The shortbread layer makes a perfect buttery neutral flavor against the gooey brownie and the rich ganache on top.

Heaven. On. Earth.