Now, it’s finally time for pumpkin! Even my most die-hard, pumpkin spice loving friend was getting sick of pumpkin spice before the end of October. This is why I don’t understand starting everything earlier and earlier every year. I was seeing Christmas wrapping paper and presents in displays before my Dad’s birthday in mid-October this year. Does that really lengthen our enjoyment of the season or does it just make us sick of it sooner? As we come up to Thanksgiving, I do start wanting pumpkin. And these pumpkin bars make a great addition to the deer hunting bar and cookie menu.
A criteria that I have for bars that make it to our hunting camp is that they are finger food. Especially at deer camp where we don’t have running water, I don’t want knife and fork bars. These bars are a little more on the cakey side and are easy to grab and eat. Some raisins add a nice chew and a little sweetness and make the bars a little more interesting. Another great thing about these bars is you can stir them together by hand – no mixer needed! And while I love my mixer, it’s nice to not have to pull it out all the time. I use my own homemade pumpkin puree in this recipe too – it’s almost always something I have in the freezer.
The recipe came from one of my earliest cookbooks, The Cookie Bible (#CommissionsEarned). I made some minor modifications in my version.
Here’s what you need:
Now, you’ll notice that nothing in the ingredients above look like frosting, yet there are frosting on the bars in the picture. Well as it happened, I had made something else with frosting at the same time as these bars and had a lot leftover. It was as if the make-shift piping bag just moved to these bars with a mind of its own and added the frosting. I recommend the frosting from my carrot cake cookies, the orange essence in the cream cheese frosting is complimented by the orange zest in these bars.
Start by mixing some flour, baking powder, cinnamon, salt, nutmeg, ginger, and cloves in a small bowl.
In a large bowl add sugar, apple sauce, pumpkin puree, an egg, an egg white, and some oil.
Whisk together until combined. Add flour mixture and some orange zest.
Stir until combined. Add raisins.
Gently stir raisins in.
Pour batter into a greased 13×9 in pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 25-30 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool in pan set on wire rack.
Now, the recipe I started with tells you to stop here, cool the bars, cut and enjoy. But I couldn’t resist adding some cream cheese frosting. If you want to follow my lead, hop on over to my Carrot Cake Cookie recipe and make up about a half batch of frosting. You could spread the frosting over the bars, and cut later. Because I was taking these to hunting camp, I sliced the bars first and then piped the frosting on top so that you could just pop out one bar at a time from the pan.
Yep, frosting these bars was definitely a good idea!
Store covered.
- 1 ¾ c flour
- 2 t baking powder
- 1 t cinnamon
- ½ t salt
- ½ t fresh ground nutmeg
- ¼ t ground ginger
- ¼ t cloves
- ¾ c sugar
- ½ c unsweetened apple sauce
- ½ pumpkin puree
- 1 egg
- 1 egg white
- 2 T vegetable oil
- 1 t orange zest
- ½ c raisins
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
- Grease 9x13 pan lightly with cooking spray.
- In a small bowl mix together flour, baking powder, cinnamon, salt, nutmeg, ginger and cloves.
- In a large bowl add sugar, apple sauce, pumpkin, egg, egg white, and oil. Whisk together until well combined.
- Stir in flour mixture and orange zest.
- Stir in raisins.
- Spread in prepared pan.
- Bake 25-30 minutes until toothpick comes out clean.
- Cool in pan set on wire rack before cutting.
- Frost if desired.
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