Here is dessert #1 of my little Thanksgiving Dessert Twists series. This year, I have decided to go on a different route than normal using the same major ingredients—pumpkin, apple, pecans. First stop is pumpkin pie!

While you can never replace a pumpkin pie, with its warm spices, natural wholesome pumpkin flavor, flaky, buttery crust, I believe you give it a nice chocolate friend for us that are super obsessed! I know that you’re seeing pumpkin everything everywhere right now—from the latté to the candy, the chip to even the beer, it’s been absolutely huge this fall, and rightfully so. Pumpkin is something that obviously screams autumn, and holidays, and warm coziness. As you have read in many, many of my most recent posts, you just can’t make it through September-November without a pumpkin baked good! Like here and here.

So, naturally, I have added yet another pumpkin dessert to the table, but this time not only is it full of rich chocolate, this fudge cake can be made in fabulous individual ramekins—basically made to order! After an extremely long afternoon of eating that incredible Thanksgiving dinner, you can pop one of these little cakes into the oven, digest for 30 minutes while it bakes and cools slightly, and then truly indulge. They can even be made a day ahead of time—bonus points!

I love the denseness in this cake. Looking at the ingredients, chocolate is what it’s mostly made up of! You’ve got a tiny bit of butter + the pumpkin purée for a bit of fat, eggs to bind it, a touch of sweetness, and then some flour to give it some body. There isn’t even that much sugar in it! Can we argue that it is mildly healthy?! Sure!

And, it is Oh. So. Fudgy. Like, out of this world. This is like a deluxe, eat at a really nice restaurant dessert—and you can have it for any party, not just Thanksgiving, and blow people’s minds!

Choose your favorite chocolate, try not to eat half the bar like me, and treat yo’self to the most luxurious chocolate pumpkin fudge cake there is!

ingredients

Semi-Sweet Chocolate (melted)—4 oz

Butter—0.75 oz, or 1 ½ TBL

Brown Sugar—1 oz, or 2 TBL

Eggs—2

Flour—0.65 oz, or 2 TBL

Salt—pinch

Puréed Pumpkin—1.25 oz, or 2 TBL

Cinnamon—0.1 oz, or ½ tsp

process

Over a double boiler, melt your chocolate. Once melted, remove from the heat and allow to cool slightly.

Preheat your oven to 425˚ F.

Rub the inside of 2 ramekins with butter.

In the bowl of your mixer, cream the butter and brown sugar.

Add the eggs.

Once combined, add the flour, salt, cinnamon and pumpkin.

When all is mixed well, add a small amount of the melted chocolate, just so that the eggs won’t be shocked by the warm chocolate therefore they won’t cook.

Once the chocolate has been mixed well with the batter, slowly stream in the rest of your chocolate. Mix until just combined.

Pour the batter evenly into the 2 ramekins, they should not be filled any higher than ¾ of the way.

Place on a sheet pan and place in the oven.

Bake for 12 minutes, the cake will just start to pull away from the sides of the ramekin.

Remove from the oven, allow to cool for just a couple of minutes.

The center is slightly molten, and will become extra rich and fudgy the more that it cools!

You may either eat right out of the dish, or invert onto another place, dust with confectioner’s sugar, add a little bit of whipped cream, and enjoy!

Bon Appétit!

Happy November! Now that Halloween is over, the true holiday season is upon us! Why yes, I may begin to watch Elf soon (don’t tell Roberto), and humming some tunes that are only appropriate for next month may occur while I prepare my Thanksgiving dessert menu, but I just cannot help it. While I absolutely adore fall and all that it has to offer, November 1st-December 26th has me in a rather nonstop giddy state. Who knows, maybe there is just 100x the normal amount of love in the air, or maybe I am just super excited for Peppermint Mocha season (sorry, PSL, you no longer win!), but as of November 1st, general happiness is at an all time high!

So, of course, I had to bake a staple in the winter diet—ginger cookies. Growing up, my grandparents would always have a huge box of these in their house, and I would, not so sneakily, eat handfuls at a time. I used to just let them soak in milk or hot chocolate, get super mushy, and then eat them, about 10 in a sitting, before possibly going back for more. Wow, sugar obsessed much? Not ashamed!

As I now feel as though it is acceptable for me to purchase these forever favorite ginger snaps, I thought it would be even better to make my own version, so I don’t have to go back to the supermarket every other day to shamefully buy another box! With my addition of candied ginger, the spiciness of this cookie multiplies, and at the same time, brings the sweetness level down—this allows you to eat more of these, guilt free because your mouth isn’t screaming at you for a sugar overload! Best part of my ginger spice cookies? When you roll them in sugar and bake them, they form a nice, crisp outer shell, but leaving the insides soft and chewy, the most amazing combination of textures.

It’s a good thing that I am feeling extra full of love these days because, as much as I am obsessed with these cookies, my fiancé is even more! So go and take your cheery self into the kitchen, maybe put on a pair of favorite socks that happen to have reindeer on them, or your coziest snowflake sweater, and get to baking!