With Thanksgiving just a few days away, we wanted to bring you into our homes and show you what scrumptious treats we’ve been planning for our family dinners ! We hope you enjoy these recipes 🙂

Megan – Pumpkin Brownies

Mmm, Pumpkin is my FAVORITE and these brownies are truly delicious! I’ve been making these the last 3 years and what I love most about this year is  get to have my “Official Mess Maker” (Emma, 3) be my assistant! This girl LOVES to help out in the kitchen and baking with her is one of my favorite things to do.  It’s also neat to have my mom (pictured above) be a part of the fun too!  These brownies are quick, made from scratch and never last long in my house.  I highly recommend making these for your Thanksgiving get together this year (or really just for your own everyday enjoyment). 😉

Ingredients: 

• ¾ cup all purpose flour
• ½ teaspoon baking powder
• ½ teaspoon salt
• ¾ cup butter (melted)
• 1 ½ cups white sugar
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 3 eggs
• ¼ cup cocoa powder
• ½ cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
• ½ cup pumpkin puree
• ½ cup walnuts (chopped)
• ¾ teaspoon cinnamon
• ½ teaspoon ground cloves
• ½ teaspoon nutmeg

Directions:

Step 1: Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees and line an 8×8 inch baking dish with aluminum foil. Lightly grease the foil. In a bowl combine flour, baking powder and salt.

Step 2: In a separate bowl mix together melted butter, sugar, and vanilla. Beat in the eggs (one at a time). Add in the flour mixture, a little at a time and stir until the batter is evenly moistened. Divide the batter in half evenly into 2 separate bowls.

Step 3: In one of the bowls blend in the cocoa powder and chocolate chips. In the second bowl of batter stir in pumpkin puree, walnuts, cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg.

Step 4: Spread ½ of the chocolate batter mixture into the bottom of the baking dish. Pour ½ of the pumpkin batter mixture over that. Repeat the layers, ending with a pumpkin layer. Drag a kitchen knife or spatula through the layers in a swirling motion creating a marble appearance.

Step 5: Bake in the oven at 350 degrees for 40-45 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Cool and cut into squares.

 

Gina – Cornbread Skillet

Most families have long standing traditions for Thanksgiving. Before I got married, my family would always have Thanksgiving at my mom’s house, where the tradition was forgetting the bread in the oven until we smelled it burning. OK, OK, so that’s not the best tradition, but it seemed to happen EVERY YEAR! Now that I’m married, Zach and I have created a new tradition – attend as many Thanksgiving meals in one day as possible and stay awake through it all! Last year we made it to two Thanksgivings back to back. This year we will be attending a whopping THREE Thanksgivings!!! Wish us luck!! 😉

For my recipe, I wanted to share a new dish we have now deemed a MUST for Thanksgiving dinner – Cornbread Skillet!

Start out by placing your skillet inside the oven and pre-heating it to 425 degrees to warm up the skillet!

Ingredients:

In a large bowl, mix together your dry ingredients:

1 1/4 cup Corn Meal Ground

3/4 cup All-Purpose Flour

1/4 cup Granulated Sugar

1 teaspoon Kosher Salt

2 teaspoons Baking Powder

1/2 teaspoon Baking Soda

In a separate bowl, mix together your wet ingredients:

1/3 cup Whole Milk

1 cup Buttermilk

2 lightly beaten eggs

Directions:

Pour your mixed together wet ingredients into your mixed together dry ingredients and stir well. Once you’ve mixed those two bowls together, pour in 7 tablespoons of melted unsalted butter – continuing to stir as you pour. This creates your cornmeal mix!

Remove your skillet from the oven and reset oven to 375 degrees. Add 1 tablespoon of melted unsalted butter to the skillet. Then, pour your cornmeal mix into the skillet!

Place skillet back in oven to bake for 20-25 minutes! After it’s done baking, remove from oven, let cool, then serve 🙂

 

Kelley Ann – Bourbon Pecan Pie

Thanksgiving at my household is filled with good food, lots of wine, laughter, and competition. From games to “pie offs”, no holiday is complete without a bit of friendly competition! To keep things interesting and start a new tradition, my mom decided to initiate a family “pie off” where we would each create a pie from scratch, crust and all! The boys (our dad and husbands) pick the winner who’s delicious pie earns them bragging rights until the next year!

Here is the Bourbon Pecan Pie recipe I used during my winning year – enjoy!

Ingredients:

1 cup sugar

3 tablespoons butter, melted

1/2 cup dark corn syrup

3 large eggs, beaten

1 1/2-2 cups pecans, halved

2 tablespoons good quality bourbon

1 – 9inch deep dish pie shell (or in our case we made our own!)

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

Directions:

In a medium bowl, stir together the sugar and melted butter. Add the corn syrup, eggs, pecans, and bourbon, and stir until all ingredients are combined. Pour mixture into an unbaked pie shell, and place on a heavy-duty cookie sheet. Bake for 10 minutes. Lower the oven temperature to 350 degrees F, and continue to bake for an additional 25 minutes, or until pie is set. Remove from oven and cool on a wire rack.