I'm all about pumpkin everything. Any
squash, for that matter. My breakfast yogurt is sweetened with
butternut squash daily. And if you have a glut of zuchinni over the
summer, I'll eat it a lot faster than you might think.
However, I don't do much with pumpkin
baking wise because I'm generally the only one that eats it. This has
already been pretty much the death of this blog...me, the one who
behaves around food, eating one piece of cake a day and the rest of
the family forgetting it was there.
So how did I get around that for this month's Sourdough Surprises challenge? Make something only I was going to eat anyway – protein
bars!
I've mentioned my love of protein and snack bars on this blog before. Getting my protein needs in is
especially challenging now as the holidays and family birthdays drag
me from one party to the next where I'm pretty much eating snack
food. So, I decided to try and make the changes I wanted to my old
bar recipe, using pumpkin in place of banana!
The new recipe:
Sourdough Peanut Butter Pumpkin Protein
Bars
Makes 9
1 cup sourdough starter
1/2 cup flavored peanut butter (I used
Peanut Butter & Co. Cinnamon Raisin Swirl
1/2 cup canned pumpkin
1 cup (3 scoops) vanilla whey protein
powder
2 cups quick cooking oats
Combine all ingredients. Carefully
spread in an 8x8” greased baking pan. Bake at 350 just until a
toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 18 minutes. Cut into bars and enjoy!
I probably shouldn't have increased the
oats by that much...a cup and a half probably would have been
sufficient and it cut into the sweetness of the bar. Still, it's
another lesson learned and a potential recipe for my other project,
Junk Food Fittie.
Check out our other awesome pumpkin
creations!
