Yesterday autumn officially started!

Now, as much as I love summer, I almost equally enjoy autumn! Not so much because of the weather (although it can be very nice as well) and definitely not because of the spiders. No I love autumn because of the wonderful colors outside and the delicious products nature provides us with in this time of year. Even though nowadays we can buy almost any vegetable or fruit all year round, it still is a time where freshly harvested produce is largely available.

One of those products is of course the pumpkin. There is a pumpkin farm at walking distance from our house and they sell pretty much every kind of pumpkin there is. Can’t get any fresher than that!

So other than preparing wonderful dinners (which I already did a couple of times and will write about those later) I decided to bake a brownie, all plant based of course. Instead of the usual square form I used a pumpkin shape baking tray, just for fun.

Since this was the first time I baked a brownie using pumpkin (I usually use sweet potato) it turned out really good, although next time I will add some more maple syrup and a tiny bit more pumpkin. But all in all I am satisfied with this first attempt.

I used a small to medium sized pumpkin and cut it in half, deseeded it and roasted it in the oven at 200℃ until tender. After letting it cool a little I scraped out the soft “flesh” and mesh it with a fork (you can do this a day in advance if you like and store in the fridge). You should have about 1+1/2 cup of pumpkin puree. I melted 150 grams of pure (82%) vegan chocolate. I melted 1/3 cup of coconut oil and mixed them with a teaspoon of vanilla powder (or scrape one vanilla bean), a pinch of salt, 2+1/2 tbsp of maple syrup, 1+1/4 cup of flour (I used 1/2 cup of almond meal and 3/4 cup spelt flower) a teaspoon of baking soda and one shot of espresso. Poured the batter in the baking tray and placed it in the oven for 20-25 minutes at 200℃. Let cool for a while and store in refrigerator, if it will last that long…..

Enjoy!