Mummy Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Blondies #Halloween recipe from Molly MacRae

If there’s one thing you should know about museum professionals, it’s that museum people love their mummies. (Decades ago I was the director of the history museum in Tennessee’s oldest town.) Last year at Halloween I gave you a recipe for Mummy Hand Pies. 

Now, for your spooky pleasure, here’s another mummy recipe that you can easily adapt for brownies or other bars or cookies.

However, this was my first time making these pumpkin chocolate chip blondies, and I wish I’d left enough time to make them again before posting the recipe for today (really, we can only eat so many mummies in one week), so read my mutterings in the next paragraphs before running to the kitchen to whip up your own batch. Bottom line, these mummies are tasty, but I have thoughts.

3 mutterings about my mummies:

One: The recipe, as written, calls for 1 teaspoon of baking soda. No one else who ate the mummies said they detected the slightly bitter taste of too much baking soda, but I did. Also, although moist, the texture of these mummies was too light and crumbly to be called “fudgy” as the recipe did. I think the texture issue is also a result of too much baking soda. Or maybe not enough egg? Read on.

Two: Other blondie and brownie recipes I’ve looked at call for 1 teaspoon baking powder and 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda. They also call for 2 eggs rather than just 1. The mummies were good enough, as is, but I think adding another egg and switching the 1 teaspoon baking soda for 1 teaspoon baking powder plus 1/4 teaspoon baking soda will make them not just good enough but hauntingly delicious.

Three: Mummy blondies are much moister than sugar cookies. As a result, some of the mummy wrappings, which I made with cookie frosting that was supposed to harden so they could be stacked, instead started melting and the mummies looked like they were turning into zombies. I’m not saying that’s good or bad, just reporting my observations. Some of the pupils in the mummies’ eyeballs also began to weep. So creepy! Kids would probably love it.

 

Mummy Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Blondies

Adapted from Margaux Laskey’s adaptation of Everyday Annie’s recipe)

Makes 24 to 36 mummies

 

Ingredients

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon pumpkin pie spice (or, if you don’t have the mixture, make your own with 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon, 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg, 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger, and 1/8 teaspoon ground cloves or allspice)

1 teaspoon baking soda (see mutterings above—next time I’ll use 1 teaspoon baking powder and only 1/4 teaspoon baking soda)

1 teaspoon kosher salt

1 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature

1 1/4 cups brown sugar (or white)

1 large egg (see mutterings above—next time I’ll use 2 eggs)

2 teaspoons vanilla

1 cup pumpkin puree

1 cup chocolate chips

1/2  cup chopped walnuts (optional)

White frosting for mummy wrappings

Candy eyeballs

 

Directions

Heat oven to 350 degrees F. Line a 9x13-inch pan either with parchment or foil (if using foil, spray with nonstick baking spray). Use enough parchment or foil to hang over the pan’s sides. That way you can easily lift the blondies from the pan when cool.  

In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, pumpkin pie spice (or your own mixture), baking soda (and baking powder if using), and salt (see mutterings, above, about baking soda).

In another medium bowl (or the bowl of an electric mixer), beat together butter and sugar until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Beat in egg(s) (see mutterings, above, about eggs) and vanilla until well combined. Add pumpkin puree and beat until well blended.

Add flour mixture to pumpkin mixture until just incorporated. Add chocolate chips and walnuts (if using) and mix until combined. (I accidentally added the chips and nuts first and then the flour).

Spread batter in prepared pan. Bake until edges begin to pull away from the sides and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out with just a few crumbs, 25-30 minutes. Cool completely, in pan, on a wire rack.

When cool, lift blondies from the pan using the parchment or foil, and transfer to a cutting board. Peel back parchment or foil. Cut into 24 or 36 mummies.

Place candy eyeballs on mummies. Use white decorator frosting to give the idea of mummy wrappings (looping some around eyes to help hold them on). Don’t worry if your mummies end up looking messy; people will gobble them up!

 

🎃 click here for a free, printable pdf of this recipe 🎃

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Take time to curl up with a trio of cozies – a drink, a treat, and a good book. May I suggest a bit of armchair travel, too? Visit Ocracoke Island, off the coast of North Carolina, in the Haunted Shell Shop Mysteries.

 

Or travel to the Scottish Highlands in the Highland Bookshop Mysteries.

 

Spend time in northeast Tennessee in the Haunted Yarn Shop Mysteries, two stand-alone mysteries, and a collection of short stories. 

Or travel from Cape Cod on the east coast to Monterey on the west coast, with a stop in Ohio along the way in my very gentle mysteries written as Margaret Welch.

 

Happy reading! 

The Boston Globe says Molly MacRae writes “murder with a dose of drollery.” She’s the author of the award-winning, national bestselling Haunted Yarn Shop Mysteries and the Highland Bookshop Mysteries. As Margaret Welch, she writes books for Annie’s Fiction. Her short stories have appeared in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine and she’s a winner of the Sherwood Anderson Award for Short Fiction. Visit Molly on Facebook and Pinterest and connect with her on Instagram or Bluesky.