"Chocolate Chip" Pumpkin Bars

Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Bars

I came across this delicious little recipe back in August. And of course we had to try it out.

I omitted the chocolate chips. As much as I love the pumpkin and chocolate chip flavor combo, I am avoiding what I like to call hard-core sweets. And I just can't justify chocolate chips.  However, I did add butterscotch chips to a few bars. But they are still delicious plain.

The first time I made these they were delicious. This time, I decided to half the recipe. Still delicious. It was my first time halving a recipe that has 1 egg in it. Weird, yeah? I don't know what people usually do about that, but I stirred my egg and then poured it into a measuring cup. It was about a quarter cup so I measured out an eighth cup of egg. Just thought I'd let you know because with this much sugar and butter, half is always better.

The original recipe can be found here (with more pics).

To make these bars:

Whisk together:

2 cups flour
1 tbspn pumpkin pie spice
1 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp salt

With your mixer, in a separate bowl, beat together:

1 cup of butter at room temperature
1 1/4 cups sugar

Then beat in:

1 egg
2 tsp vanilla

Beat in 1 cup pumpkin puree and gradually add the dry ingredients. If you're adding chips, chocolate or butterscotch, stir them in. Pour into a sprayed 9x13 baking dish and bake for 25 minutes at 350 degrees.  Try to let them cool before devouring or you'll end up with a burned tongue (not that I would know).

Enjoy!

Pumpkin Candies

Pumpkin candies. Candy Corn's plump cousin. Enough said.

31 Days of Pumpkin Goodness

31 Days of Pumpkin Goodness starts tomorrow.

I will be linking up to the nester and joining all the 31 Days fun.

For my 31 days of pumpkin goodness I will be sharing some of my all-time favorite pumpkin recipes, trying out some new pumpkin recipes (I will share links to give due credit), putting up a couple pumpkin activities to do with young ones, and just sharing all of my favorite pumpkin things.

Yea for Pumpkin!!!

Day 1: Pumpkin Candies

Day 2: "Chocolate Chip" Pumpkin Bars

Day 3: Pumpkin Granola Bars

Day 4: Pumpkin Bars with Cream Cheese Icing

Day 5: Pumpkin Candles

Day 6: Healthy Pumpkin Muffins

Day 7: Best Pumpkin Smoothie

Day 8: Pumpkin Cake Pops

Day 9: Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Bread

Day 10: Pumpkin Decorating

Day 11: Pumpkin Bars with Mini Chocolate Chips

Day 12: Pumpkin Hot Chocolate

Day 13: Pumpkin Caramel Bread

Day 14: Homemade Pumpkin Smoothies

Day 15: Pumpkin for Spa Day

Day 16: Pumpkin Pancakes

Day 17: Panera's Pumpkin Muffin

Day 18: Pumpkin Pie Granola

Day 19: Pumpkin Parfait

Day 20: Orange Pumpkins

Day 21: Pumpkin Bagels

Day 22: Pumpkin Cream Cheese

Day 23: Simple Pumpkin Muffins

Day 24: Frozen Pumpkin Pie Treats

Day 25: Busy Bag Pumpkins

Day 26: Pumpkin Bread

Day 27: Pumpkin Malt

Day 28: The Pumpkin Patch

Day 29: Pumpkin Pie Dip

Day 30: Pumpkin and Cream Cheese Muffins

Day 31: Jack O' Lanterns

October Pumpkin-Fest

Two weeks to go and then October will be here. I am committed to my 31 days of pumpkin. I took the plunge and jotted down my 31 post ideas. Plus a few extra in case some don't quite pan out.

31 days is quite a commitment for me. I am hoping to get a bunch typed up and saved so that I won't really be stressing out in front of the computer every day. I would hate to grow bitter towards pumpkin.

I am doing okay with my new school blog, The School Lunch Box, but I hope I am not trying to take too much on. 12 posts a week is quite a bit when I think my total in the last year wasn't that high.


So come back in two weeks for your pumpkin viewing pleasure.

In Love with Pumpkin

Fall is just around the corner. Can you guess what I am most excited for?

PUMPKIN

That's right.

I am hoping to join up to the 31 days of blogging in the 31 days of October. Do I love pumpkin that much? I think I just might.

So I am going to spend the rest of this month gathering all things pumpkin, as well as stocking up on canned pumpkin (because I just don't feel motivated enough to make my own pumpkin puree).

I spent 2 hours yesterday cleaning my "new" oven (because we moved 2 weeks ago). I just need to touch up a few spots with some Arm & Hammer toothpaste (thank you Anna), and I will be set.

And on a side note, if you live in my neighborhood and would like to enjoy some pumpkin treats, let me know because I may soon have an abundance.

Baking

After months of sickness and staying away from the kitchen, I am baking again. Not that I'm posting about it.

Before Halloween we did Bakerella's Mummy cake pops. They turned out cute, but I was too busy to get any pics.

Also I finally made the Pumpkin Chocolate Chip bars posted on bakeat350. Absolutely loved the texture but a whole bag of chocolate chips took away the pumpkin essence and next time I'll only put in half a bag. I definitely recommend them so click on her blog and search that recipe. If you are as addicted to pumpkin goodies as I am you'll be glad you did.

Speaking of pumpkin addictions, I am so glad the Pumpkin Smash is back at Jamba Juice. I've been getting my weekly fix and I will be so sad when they take it away again. Why can't pumpkin be a year round flavor?

And, back to bakeat 350, did you see the picture of the chocolate chip cookie dough fudge? I just saw it, and since my new routine is to bake a goodie every Sunday, I was so excited. Until I realized I don't have the brown sugar (or a candy thermometer-- that's been on my to-buy list for years and I just never remember to buy one and always just try winging it). Someday I will make the fudge. I am still trying to make her chocolate chip cookie dough cupcakes too. I'll just have to have a chocolate chip cookie dough treat day. And maybe for today I'll just make chocolate chip cookie dough.

And I have a new favorite blog that I will talk about soon. Not nearly as fun as chocolate chip cookie dough sweeties, but still awesome.

The Bad Fish

You know how food can be really scary? How we never really know what's inside and what it's been exposed to in all of those factories? How every year or so a bad batch of something goes out to the public?

Well, even with all that, I still think it's much scarier to eat out all the time. I think the potential for food poisoning is much greater.

So, after two months of almost solid eating out, I really shouldn't be surprised that I spent last night sick.

After exercising and being out in the hot sunny weather yesterday, I was fighting a major headache. Two doses of tylenol later and I was worried it was turning into a migraine. So I thought I'd eat a light dinner and go to bed early. And how's fish for a light dinner? Sounds perfect, right? Except it went terribly wrong and prevented me from getting that early bed time (the silver lining is that my headache seemed to go away, so at least I wasn't up sick all night with a migraine on top of it).

 I just had some apple juice, and if nothing terrible happens, I will be heading out to the market to get more food. The kind you have to prepare and cook and clean up after yourself.

I feel like my poor stomach needs a break and I am too scared to eat out again right now, so I guess I am going to have to get over my laziness and plan meals again (or, we'll just survive by eating pb&j's and grilled cheeses for a few weeks). I really have no idea how I came up with 20-25 meals a month. What did I used to cook? My mind is completely blank. I mentioned this week that I was going to start weaning myself off the eating out gradually. You know, starting with taking out one meal a day. Well Wednesday I went to lunch with a friend, so that meant no going out for dinner. What did I do? Did I cook a delicious gourmet meal? No. I cut up a cantaloupe and put out some rolls and cheese. While I actually found the meal delicious and satisfying (nice and light after all the eating out), I don't think that type of "meal" would work 6 days a week.

I guess I'll see what happens at the store. And maybe tonight we can have rolls and grapes, you know, to mix it up. I definitely won't be buying fish.