Pumpkin lures me out of my baking hiatus

Well, I successfully went one month without baking. It was a long month, lol. I feel like I've gotten ahold of my compulsion to bake bake bake and eat eat eat. I'm trying to cut back to just doing it for special ocassions and focus on baking for others. This week we are celebrating a birthday at work as well as the first day of our new boss. I volunteered to make cornbread and pumpkin bars. I'm still trying to choose the perfect cornbread recipe but I made the pumpkin bars this afternoon. I just tried one and they are great! Thanks to bakingblonde for sharing her aunt's recipe with me. I made one batch for my sister and my parents and then I made a double batch in a 9x13 pan to take to work and share. These squares are not as fluffy as a sheet cake, but not as dense as a cookie bar or brownie. Somewhere in between I guess you'd say.



Pumpkin Squares
1/3 cup oil (vegetable or canola)
2 eggs
1 cup sugar
1 cup canned pumpkin
1/4 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1/8 tsp ground cloves (I didn't have any cloves so I went without, but I'm sure it would add a great kick)
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

Cream cheese frosting (I used store bought instead of making it from scratch)
Chopped walnuts (I used candy corn instead, it's so festive! The candy corn pumpkins would have been fun too)

Preheat oven to 350 (I used a dark non stick pan for my double batch so I lowered the temp 25 degrees to keep the bars from getting too dark).

Lightly spray with 9X9 baking pan with Pam.
In a medium bowl, cream together the oil, eggs, sugar, pumpkin, spices, salt, and baking powder (I did this step in my KA mixer).
Gently fold in the flour, just until combined (I did this by hand).
Evenly spread the mixture into the prepared pan.
Bake bars for 22-30 minutes, or until a toothpick placed in the center comes out clean.
Frost cooled bars with cream cheese frosting and top with walnuts (or candy corn or whatever you choose!)