Sunday, November 1, 2015

Sourdough Surprises: Peanut Butter Pumpkin Protein bars

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!

7 comments:

  1. Nice idea! There always seems to be a bit of pumpkin left when I make a recipe, so maybe I'll try throwing it into my energy bars too.

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    1. It works the same way as bananas or applesauce as a binder. Going to play with the recipe again this week!

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  4. Hi, I hope you see this very belated comment on your post! I made your Sourdough Peanut Butter Pumpkin Protein Bars this morning, using a chocolate-flavored protein powder, 1.5 cups of oats as you suggested & dumping in 1/4 cup each of pepitas & sunflower seeds I needed to use up. WE LOVE THESE BARS! I figured they'd be a good snack for busy mornings, but I had no idea how much we'd love them & end up eating them as a dessert item, too.

    I've been through several trials of sourdough over the years but never stuck with it due to too many brick-like whole-grain loaves & not having a clue what to do with the discard except to compost it. I've had better luck with SD WW bread on this latest go-round, and finding your blog of ideas for using SD discard is immensely helpful. Thank you for leaving it up so latecomers like me can benefit & enjoy. Happy baking & eating from a food-obsessed reader :))

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