Today despite not having much to do I decided to not waste my day by taking a few trial runs on holiday baking. The first recipe I tried was pumpkin bars with cream cheese icing. I got the recipe from a friend from work brought the bars in for Black Friday. I’m not a fan of pumpkin pie so I passed on trying one until two days later when I worked a late floorset. The ladies I worked with raved about how good they were and I had to have one. It was just as good as they had said. So today I tried baking it myself:
Pre-baking:
Post Baking and cut into bars:
Once these were finished baking I made some Puppy chow! Sorry Lucy… despite the name this isn’t for you! But don’t be sad. She got a regular dog treat after I took the photo.
As a Christmas present for myself I bought icing tips. This was my trial run and it was pretty fun. I ended up deciding just to ice them regularly because I had a lot of leftover icing and since they were all different they looked a little silly.
In Case you were interested, here is the recipe.
Pumpkin Bars
Ingredients
* 4 eggs
* 1 2/3 cups granulated sugar
* 1 cup vegetable oil
* 15-ounce can pumpkin
* 2 cups sifted all-purpose flour
* 2 teaspoons baking powder
* 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
* 1 teaspoon salt
* 1 teaspoon baking soda
Icing:
* 8-ounce package cream cheese, softened
* 1/2 cup butter or margarine, softened
* 2 cups sifted confectioners’ sugar
* 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Directions
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
Using an electric mixer at medium speed, combine the eggs, sugar, oil and pumpkin until light and fluffy. Stir together the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, salt and baking soda. Add the dry ingredients to the pumpkin mixture and mix at low speed until thoroughly combined and the batter is smooth. Spread the batter into a greased 13 by 10-inch baking pan. Bake for 30 minutes. Let cool completely before frosting. Cut into bars.
To make the icing: Combine the cream cheese and butter in a medium bowl with an electric mixer until smooth. Add the sugar and mix at low speed until combined. Stir in the vanilla and mix again. Spread on cooled pumpkin bars.
Both turned out deliciously! Hope testing on my family goes well!