Harvest Brownies & Evie Shockley
Sometimes you need brownies. Brownies might, in fact, be one of the few things I still feel proud of as a USer (ok, Kendrick Lamar’s halftime show also). They were invented in Chicago (at the same hotel as chocolate chip cookies!) and in a month where the rise of facism and white nationalism has been seasoned with a sprinkling of snow and sleet storms (where I live), sometimes you need some damn brownies.
When I traveled in Spain last year, I ate at a lot of incredible restaurants, even a few very fancy Michelin star ones. I chose restaurants that highlighted traditional cuisine from their particular region, and at meal after meal, after multiple courses of incredibly delicious Spanish regional specialties, the dessert would be…brownies! Often on the menu as “brownie americano.” (Ok there was some foie gras ice cream too, but it was accompanied by, you guessed it, a brownie!)
You are going to think this recipe sounds very strange and possibly gross. I can reassure you that my youngest child, who basically lives on bagels and cream cheese and hates things mixed with other things (the horrors), loves these and requested them for his birthday. I’ve never served these to anyone who didn’t love them, and if you tasted one you wouldn’t know they had squash in them, you would just think they were unusually moist and delicious brownies. I’m sorry to say, I don’t have a photo for you because we ate them all too fast. They look like regular ass brownies. Here is a cat pic instead.
This recipe is based on one from food blogger Elspeth Hay I found like 15 years ago, which she had adapted from a recipe in Food & Wine magazine. I most often make these as individual cupcakes, sometimes as a cake, and occasionally as a pan of brownies. It’s a versatile batter, do what you want with it.
The best part of these brownies is that you get to have a delicious treat and also know that you just had a serving of vegetables. (Or that your kiddo did.) Wait, no, the best part is that they taste amazing and are simple to make.
Harvest Brownies
butter 82 g
sugar 230 g
eggs 106 g
vanilla extract 2 g
whole wheat flour 112 g (sure, you can use white flour but the whole wheat flour here is part of what makes these so moist, and since brownies are supposed to be dense, you don’t need the airy lift that white flour gives you)
baked, pureed winter squash 166g (I use butternut. Just make sure it’s not too super wet, I don’t recommend using freshly baked pumpkin, for example, though you could definitely used canned pumpkin puree which is usually actually sweet potato)
baking powder 1 g
Baking soda 1 g
salt 2 g
chocolate chunks 74 g (we always, always add extra on top, this is the minimum amount for the batter itself. The higher quality the chocolate, the more delicious your brownies will be)
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F, and butter and flour your pan (I recommend a spring form if you’re doing this as a cake) or line a muffin pan with muffin cups.
Melt chocolate and butter together in a double boiler.
In a large mixing bowl, beat together the eggs, sugar, vanilla, and salt for about 2 minutes, until creamy and light in color.
Add in the squash and the butter-chocolate mixture, and stir until well-mixed.
Whisk together the flour and baking powder and baking soda in a mixing cup, then gently fold them into the chocolate mixture until everything is just combined. Pour batter into your pan or muffin cups, and scatter extra chocolate chunks on top.
Bake for 20-25 minutes, they should be over 190 degrees F in the center.
Ok, now you have a warm brownie in your hand and we can proceed.
I went to a reading by poet Evie Shockley at Smith College last week and it was such a nourishing experience. Shockley read a brand new poem for us that she had written at the beginning of January. I wish I could share it with you here but it’s not out yet, so I will just say that it was about waking up on Inauguration Day filled with dread and anger and many other feels, with the speaker wishing that she could read a new poem from various poetry ancestors, such as Lucille Clifton, to guide her.
The speaker realizes that there won’t be new poems from those ancestors, and so she must pick up her pen and begin to write, herself.
(In a remarkable coincidence, I happen to be reading Clifton right now, and picked up her book from my bedside to check something. It’s a library copy, and when I opened it, it turned out to be a signed copy, with this message on the title page.)
So in the spirit of Evie Shockley, although I don’t know what to do or say or how to do it, I’m writing you this morning, without pretending I know any more than I do. I’m reading the poems of Hala Alyan and I’m listening to the audiobook A Snake Falls to Earth by Darcie Little Badger. I’m going out to walk in the snowy forest and putting my nervous system back together, bit by bit.
I pick up my pen, I call my friends and tell them I love them, I go into the kitchen and make something nourishing. I’m trying to make the world I want to live in, sometimes slowly and clumsily and wishing that someone would tell me how to do it.
With love and rage,
Adrie