Pumpkin Bars ♥

Quick and easy pumpkin bars, moist and filled with fall spices. These simple bars are a fall favorite in my kitchen, just a thin layer of cake topped with a thin-thin layer of icing. The icing isn't really necessary although a little drizzle adds a sweet counterpoint that many people like. Celebrate the glory that is October! PS All that thinness? And only 100 calories per square? More cause for celebration.

Real Food, Fresh & Seasonal. Just One Bowl + Pantry Ingredients. Budget Friendly. Little Effort, Big Taste. Weeknight Easy, Weekend Special. Rave Reviews.

Skip Straight to the Recipe

Greetings, Fellow Bakers.

I love-love-love to bake. You too?! My baking efforts lean toward "simple" which is my own definition of "spectacular" – that means cakes and cookies and bars and desserts baked on a whim with pantry ingredients.

Enter these extra-simple but somehow-perfect Pumpkin Bars. (1) Yes, pumpkin is a "vegetable" so the recipe does qualify for a food blog 100% obsessed with focused on vegetables. (2) Yes, you can really put vegetables into desserts. And I do, every so often, just look!

As Pumpkin Bars, these stand about an inch tall, with just the right cake-iness, just the right sweetness, just the right mix of fall spices. Then drown them in a sickly sweet icing – no wait! don't do that! A mere drizzle of icing is perfect, just a bit of sweet to contrast with the spices. Who needs all that frosting heaviness? Not me!

Bars or Tea Cakes? Baker's Choice.

How does a baking pan just disappear? One year I couldn't find my 8x8 pan so instead of making bars, I baked the batter into the six cups of a giant-size muffin tin – that yielded six small cakes, not muffins, real cakes, what I like to call "tea cakes" – that looked pretty and tasted oh-so-good. I love recipes with this sort of easy adaptability!

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving! Today's Pumpkin Bars are dedicated to my Canadian family and all the many Canadian readers who will soon celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving and are already beginning to search for Thanksgiving Vegetable Recipes plus even more recipe ideas for a traditional Thanksgiving. Don't miss out on the World's Best Green Bean Casserole and its very own love story. So thank you, subscribers and visitors from Canada. It's so nice to see so many from my mom's home country!

COMPLIMENTS!
"These are soooo good." ~ Rachael
"... these bars were GREAT." ~ Cordelia
"... soooo yummy! " ~ Randi
"... they are to DIE for." ~ Anonymous
"... they were delicious." ~ Gayarithi

---

PUMPKIN BARS

Hands-on time: 20 minutes
Time to table: 2 hours
Makes About 12 bars (baked in an 8x8 pan) or 6 tea cakes (baked in muffin pans)

BARS
1/4 cup salted butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup (100g) brown sugar
1 large egg
1/3 cup (80g) canned pumpkin
1 teaspoon vanilla

1/2 cup all-purpose flour, fluffed to aerate before measuring or 63g
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ginger
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

ICING
1 tablespoon melted butter
1/4 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon milk or cream
Powdered sugar to thicken

BARS Preheat oven to 350F/180F. Spray an 8x8 pan with baking spray. If making tea cakes in a giant-size six-cup muffin tin, spray extra well.

Cream the butter and brown sugar with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Add the egg and beat for 1 minute, adding air. Add the pumpkin and vanilla and beat until well mixed.

Stir together the remaining ingredients and mix into the wet mixture just until barely mixed. Pour into the prepared baking pan and bake for about 15 minutes (25 for 6 tea cakes). Remove from oven, let cool.

ICING In a small bowl (or go ahead, use the same bowl as the batter), stir together the butter, vanilla and milk. Stir in the powdered sugar until icing reaches desired consistency. To drizzle the icing across the bars, transfer the icing to a small freezer bag, then seal, snip a corner and squeeze .... otherwise use an offset spatula across the cake.

Cut into pieces and serve.

ALANNA's TIPS & KITCHEN NOTES
PAN SIZE No 8x8 pan? Hmm. You'd think that a 9x9 would work out just fine. But I don't think so, here, because how thin the cake is already and a 9x9 actually has more than 25% more surface area than an 8x8. Me, for a 9x9, I'd double the cake batter (not the icing) and then bake a little longer. For a 9x13, double both the cake batter and the icing since a 9x13 pan is very close to double the surface area of an 8x8. Remember when your math teacher told you you'd use math your whole life? Here we are!
CANNED PUMPKIN works beautifully, so does Homemade Pumpkin Purée.
FLOUR The cake texture changes a little but 100% whole wheat pastry flour works really well in these Pumpkin Bars.
ADD-INs Get creative! Once I threw in some black walnuts, other times dried currants or some dried cranberries (the cranberries should be run through a mini food processor first, otherwise they're too large for these thin bars). This recipe is begging for your own inspiration, let it fly freely!
TEA CAKES The tea cakes are tender and delicate, that makes them slightly fussy to remove from the muffin cups. Be sure to grease the muffins cups really well and to let the tea cakes cool completely before removing. Even then, use a gentle touch, slipping a knife down the sides to loosen, then gently lifting out of the muffin cup.
SPICES If you have pumpkin pie spice, go ahead, use it instead of the cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger. Or better still, try my version, it's included here with other DIY Spice Blends.

NUTRITION INFORMATION Per Piece (assumes 12): 113 Calories; 5g Tot Fat; 3g Sat Fat; 30mg Cholesterol; 94mg Sodium; 16g Carb; 0g Fiber; 11g Sugar; 1g Protein. WEIGHT WATCHERS Old Points 3 & PointsPlus 3 & SmartPoints 6 & Freestyle 5 & myWW green 5 & blue 5 & purple 5

TODAY'S VEGETABLE RECIPE INSPIRATION A 2007 Penzeys catalog

---

Still Hungry?

NEVER MISS A RECIPE!

For "home delivery" of new recipes from A Veggie Venture, sign up here. Once you do, new recipes will be automatically delivered straight to your e-mail In Box.

Hey, Pumpkin People. How About a Sweet Treat?!

~ Baked Pumpkin Donuts & Donut Holes ~
~ No-Bake Pumpkin Cream Pie ~
~ Honey Pumpkin Pie ~
~ more pumpkin recipes ~
from A Veggie Venture

~ Autumn Pumpkin Bread ~
~ Perfect Whole Wheat Pumpkin Muffins ~
~ Pumpkin Cheesecake Bars ~
~ more pumpkin recipes ~
from Kitchen Parade, my food column

Seasonal Eating: Early Fall Across the Years

Savory Spinach Kugel Survivor Soup (Beet, Potato & Cauliflower Soup) Broccoli & Tomato Thai Curry Spicy Carrot Puree with Harissa Pumpkin Bars Sautéed Okra & Garlic Smoked Scallops with Zucchini Ribbons The How & Why Guide to Growing Garlic at Home One-Skillet Cauliflower Casserole with Cheese Sauce Supper Casserole with Pumpkin & Green Chile Cornbread Topping (< great fall supper!) My Favorite Way to Roast Beets (< people love this technique!) Favorite Pumpkin Recipes (< that time of year!) Roasted Whole Red Onions with Sweet Potatoes & Rosemary Chocolate Zucchini Cake with Orange Fresh-Tomato Chili Sweet Pumpkin Seed Crumbles (< great for fall salads) Trader Joe's Flat Green Beans (Product Review)

---

Looking for healthy new ways to cook vegetables? A Veggie Venture is home to hundreds of super-organized quick, easy and healthful vegetable recipes and the famous asparagus-to-zucchini Alphabet of Vegetables. Join "veggie evangelist" Alanna Kellogg to explore the exciting world of common and not-so-common vegetables, seasonal to staples, savory to sweet, salads to sides, soups to supper, simple to special.

© Copyright Kitchen Parade
2007, 2011, 2013 (repub) & 2020 (repub)