PUMPKIN BARS

Some good and bad news from last night's cooking adventures.

The good news:

1) I had time to make one of the things I had planned this weekend. I made the two versions of pumpkin bars as a test. That is probably all I will get to, since we are going out of town at the spur of the moment (leaving early tomorrow!). I cannot handle the spontaneity.

2) Also, I got to see some good old friends tonight, and one subsequently sent me a cooking blog she has been reading. When my husband heard one of the posts was for Homemade Turkey and Chicken Jerky, I realized I would be adding yet another distraction. In return, I promised her links to two site that I like that have information about preserving food (i.e. how long you can store fresh fruits and veggies in the fridge).

They are:

Love Food Hate Waste

StillTasty

The bad news:

1) I ate two (good sized) pumpkin bars. This is after some inevitable "quality control" tests of the cream cheese frosting. My stomach is less than happy with me.

2) I used to cook almost exclusively late at night. Now I remember why that is a BAD idea. Since it is late, and I was getting impatient. I definitely frosted both types of bars before they were cool. The "bar-like" bars may be slightly undercooked (or I just cut into them too soon). Actually, I think this contributed to the fact that they won round one of the test! They tasted a bit like pumpkin pie, but with cream cheese frosting! Yum! BUT, the bad part of this, is it is not a very good test of the recipe.

3) I did not update the original recipes with my amendments, comments, and pictures. This will happen soon. Here are the originals, plus the cream cheese frosting recipe (which I actually did type up with my changes!)

Here are the recipes:

Shelly's Pumpkin Bars

Bar-like Pumpkin Bars

I altered the frosting with Shelly's recipe and got it to a VERY good point!

Our parents will be guinea pigs today for the two recipes. Verdict and full recipes will come later. I will also post the recipe that I finally recorded this morning for the muesli mix that I make. It is modeled off of the ratios of grains, nuts, and dried fruits in Dorset Cereal's Simply Delicious Muesli.

UPDATE: New winner! Apparently, the bar-like pumpkin bars are only better gooey and warm straight out of the oven and very late at night. Unanimously, my in-laws, husband, parents and I chose Shelly's good old recipe (of course not quite Shelly's recipe--my minor amendments still to come). My mother especially (Shelly is her niece) enjoyed the good old recipe.