My Lao Kitchen: Christmas Tree Brownies

Only 19 more days until Christmas, but who's counting? This week thanks to a few lights, paper, markers, and a whole lot of scotch tape it is starting to look a lot like Christmas. I've put out a little Christmas tree which even has a present under it (That I bought myself for myself. Don't judge me.) My roommate and I taught our neighbors how to make paper snowflakes, watched Elf with some friends, made a Christmas countdown chain, and baked delicious Christmas tree brownies.

Christmas Tree Brownies:

After baking all the pumpkin recipes we could find my roommate and I still had lots of puree leftover so I decided it was time to whip up some of my favorite pumpkin brownies. Now normally I like to bake everything from scratch but this recipe is just to good and easy to pass up. All you need is a box of brownie mix and some pumpkin. Mix the two ingredients together, stick it in the oven according to the directions on the box, and your done! See easy peasy!

But because it is Christmas season I didn't want to make just any ordinary old brownies. I spotted this idea on Pinterest (of course) and decided to give it a go. Once the brownies were cooled I cut them out into triangles. Now this was a little difficult because I didn't have a triangle cookie cutter and instead had to use a knife. Most of the triangles came out decent looking, the tricky part was trying to cut them all the same size. With all the "trees" cut out I topped them with cream cheese frosting (my favorite) colored with green for the trees and red for the ornaments. My brownies by no means turned out perfect looking, but they were fun to make and really delicious (and that's what's really important, right?!)

Christmas Tree Brownie Recipe:

Brownies
Ingredients
1 box brownie mix
1 can of 15oz pumpkin or homemade pumpkin puree

Directions: Preheat oven according to the directions on the box. Mix together brownie mix and pumpkin puree. Bake.

Cream Cheese Frosting
Ingredients
4 oz of butter
8 oz of cream cheese
2 cups of powdered sugar
1 tsp of vanilla extract
Green food coloring
Red food coloring

Directions: Beat together butter and cream cheese. Slowly add in the powdered sugar, still mixing as you go. Next stir in the vanilla extract. Separate the frosting into two bowls one for red and one for green. (Tip: You will use more green frosting than red.) Mix in the food coloring a little at a time until you reach desired shade.