Oh, pumpkin, how I love thee!

I have re-discovered pumpkin. But don’t you eat pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving, you may ask? To be honest with you, I am not a huge fan of pie (GASP!) so at Thanksgiving, you won’t find me chowing down on a slice of pumpkin pie or apple pie, even if my baking fool of a brother-in-law made it. And Rick can really bake a mean pie…or so I am told. But I still won’t eat it. Even with “stuff” on top  (whipped cream or “stuff” as my father likes to call it), I am just not a fan of pie.

However, most recently, I’ve been trying to find fast and healthy ways to make a good tasting protein bar that doesn’t taste like paste. Enter pumpkin. It’s low in calories, chocked full of vitamins and it just tastes really good. I knew I could count on the internet for a good recipe so I googled protein pumpkin bars and BOOM!, at the top of the list was Jamie Eason’s recipe for protein pumpkin bars. For those of you who don’t know who Jamie is, you can check her out here. 😉 She is a pretty cool chick. I reviewed her recipe, liked what she included in her bars and decided to give it a try.

Ingredients!

Here is her recipe:

Ingredients:

• ½ C Xylitol Brown Sugar Blend (Ideal)
• 1 – 4 oz. jar baby food applesauce
• 2 tsp. ground cinnamon
• 1 ½ tsp. ground ginger
• ½ tsp. ground clove
• 1 tsp. baking powder
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• ½ tsp. salt
• 2 tsp. vanilla extract
• 4 large egg whites
• 1 – 15 oz. can of raw pumpkin
• 2 C oat flour
• 2 scoops vanilla whey protein
• ½ cup almond milk
• ½ C chopped walnuts (optional)

Directions:

Finished product - Yum!

Pretty simple, huh? Pumpkin, protein powder, spices, oat flour…simple stuff. The first time I made these, I substituted the vanilla whey protein powder for strawberry whey  because that is all I had and instead of the brown sugar blend, I used my Truvia blended sugar. Delicious!!!! I also added a handful of dark chocolate chips to the mix because I freakin’ love chocolate chips. If I had my way, I would put chocolate chips in everything. Seriously.

I really enjoyed this recipe so I decided to make it again. And again. The next time I made them, I did not have applesauce so I mashed two soft bananas and added a little water to the mix. I also cut down on the Truvia to about 1/4 cup instead of 1/3 cup. I used Rocky Road protein powder (my favorite) and instead of using oat flour from a bag, I processed my rolled oats in my food processor and made my own flour. I like the texture of the oats once they are ground in the food processor because it makes a coarser flour, which I like better than the pre-packaged oat flour. Here is what the recipe looked like with my substitutions:

Ingredients:

• 1/4 cup of Truvia baking blend
• 2 small bananas (Best if ripe – add a little water once mashed to achieve the consistency of applesauce)
• Ground cinnamon
• Ground ginger
• Ground clove
• 1 tsp. baking powder
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• ½ tsp. salt
• 2 tsp. vanilla extract
• 4 large egg whites
• 1 – 15 oz. can of raw pumpkin
• 2 C oat flour
  
• 2 scoops Rocky Road protein powder
  
• ½ cup almond milk (I used a almond/coconut blend milk)
• ½ C chopped walnuts (optional) – Or add raisins, chocolate chips…..experiment!!!

Ready to eat!

Awesome! The banana was a really good substitution. I decided that the third time I would make these, I would go back to the applesauce and cut the sugar out completely. The bars tasted so good that I really did not think even the 1/4 cup that I used made that much of a difference. And it didn’t! They turned out just a delicious as the first time I made them! Eliminating the sugar did not change the recipe much. The sugar may make them a little sweeter, but with the spices, pumpkin, raisins and chocolate chips, the bars still taste pretty damn good. 😉

Enjoy!

Bottom line, experiment with your baking from time to time. Add in what you like and take out what you don’t want. Find what works for you and your taste buds. No matter what you do, everything always just tastes so much better when you make it yourself and you know EXACTLY what is going into your food. Try these yummy pumpkin protein bars and let me know what you think! Enjoy!!