Brown Sugar & Spice Pumpkin Bars by the Gluten-free Goddess

When fall comes around, all I want to do is spend hours in the kitchen, stirring, chopping, whipping, spreading, mixing, simmering, and smelling all of the different telltale whiffs of the season. Autumn is my favorite time of year because it is such a colorful season, both indoors and out. As the leaves are changing colors outside, there is also a flurry of colors inside the kitchen - bright orange pumpkins, soft beige butternut squash, green beans, plump red apples, juicy blackberries, sweet yellow corn. To me, there is something very cozy about holing yourself up in the kitchen on a cold day to cook and bake, humming along to your favorite music. For me, pumpkin is so much of what I love about fall, and I will try just about anything that contains it. So when I was poring over the wealth of recipes on Karina's blog (a.k.a. The Gluten-Free Goddess) and found this recipe for Brown Sugar and Spice Pumpkin Bars, I knew I had to give them a try. And they are scrumptious. I don't often use that word, actually, and I'm a little surprised myself that that's the first word that came to mind. The pumpkin in these holds them together beautifully, so they are not crumbly like so many gluten-free desserts tend to be. The icing is a wonderful complement to the flavor of the bars themselves. These taste just like the gluten-ful pumpkin cookies I made last year for Thanksgiving, and I can see them being a dangerous thing to have sitting around my kitchen, taunting me with their fabulous flavor. I brought them to share with some of the other people I volunteer with last night, and it was fun to watch their faces go from dubious to shocked at how good these tasted (they know about my dietary restrictions and have low expectations for the quality of anything I am actually able to eat). They actually liked them and ate almost all of them! So I hope you will give these a try, because they are sure to be a hit.

You can make these vegan by using egg replacer as a substitute for the eggs.