Peanut Butter Bars and Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls

Somehow I seem to get coerced into baking for all sorts of events. It's like my family thinks I enjoy baking all the time and will happily whip something up for any old thing. Maybe they are right. Today was one of those days, and the simplest and tastiest recipes are my grandma's. Since I seem to be baking for everyone else in this town, it's high time I shared another of my grandma's recipes with you. Her cookbook is practically destroyed from overuse in our household, but her loopy writing still shows through vanilla and butter stains. In truth, the recipes look even more appetizing with a sprinkling of sugar adding a little texture to the page. Cookbooks should be loved, after all, and the kitchen is no place for sterile cleanliness and pristine pages.

Peanut Butter Bars
from Aunt Dede's Favorite Recipes
Bars:
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup peanut butter
1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla
A splash of milk (If you live at altitude)
1 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup oatmeal

Frosting:
1 cup chocolate chips
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1/4 cup peanut butter
2 tablespoons milk

Preheat the oven to 350ºF. Cream together butter, sugar and brown sugar. Blend in peanut butter, egg, vanilla and milk (optional). Add your dry ingredients - flour, baking soda, salt and oatmeal and mix until blended. Spread the batter into a greased 9x13 pan with a spatula or wet hands. Bake at 350ºF for 20 minutes. Remove from oven and sprinkle with 1 cup chocolate chips. Turn off the oven and return pan to oven briefly until chips soften. Spread the chips evenly. Microwave together peanut butter, powdered sugar and milk for about 45 seconds until warm. Stir until smooth. Pour evenly over chocolate, then smooth and swirl with a spatula, spoon or knife.
Enjoy warm or at room temperature.

These are incredibly simple and delightful, and great for sharing if the don't all get eaten fifteen minutes after leaving the oven. As my grandma noted, these bars are "especially for kids!" Not that all desserts aren't just catering to the kid inside that loved to smear chocolate all over our faces and grinned when our fingers left little grease and chocolate smudges all over the table, the only evidence of a treat quickly devoured.

Speaking of treats, I had another recipe actually planned for today. It's October, and autumn is filled with pumpkins. The local paper won't let me forget it - every day a new photo covers the front page or the food section with the bright orange squash and grinning faces of children and adults with their very own soon-to-be-jack-o-lantern or pie. The thing is, I don't like pumpkin pie. Perhaps it's the strange consistency or the fact that squash should not be passed off as dessert. Whatever the reason, I avoid pumpkin pie and for a long time I avoided pumpkin altogether. A few months in Chile making all of my own food did a lot to change my perspective. They don't sell pumpkins, exactly, but some sort of squash that is off-white on the outside and orange inside and huge. Cheap was a big thing for me, since my priority was to spend money on traveling over everything else, not to mention that I was living with a perpetually broke Chilean friend. Our meals consisted of a lot of eggs and vegetables - cheap and healthy. The "pumpkin" filled out meals nicely and added a splash of color, especially when mashed up with mashed potatoes.

I have gotten over my aversion to pumpkins, and it's just as well because my favorite food blogger of all time just posted a pumpkin cinnamon roll recipe. The color is gorgeous, and the rolls are full of all kinds of wonderful spices to accent the already beautiful swirls of cinnamon and sugar. Since we're at altitude, I added a tiny bit more flour and pumpkin, but otherwise left the recipe as is, so I'll just point you in the right direction rather than write the recipe out. I used a 9x12 pan and a tiny glass pan for my extra two rolls rather than two round pans, though I think a 10x14 would fit all of them in. 

Before the second rise

I love the swirls! Kudos to Kara, who rolled them perfectly

After the second rise, ready to go into the oven

Really, why are you still here? You should be making the cinnamon rolls! You will never go back to normal cinnamon rolls again - these are moist, flavorful and colorful and still have the cream cheese frosting we all love. Enjoy October, and take yourself a smiling pumpkin photo - or perhaps just relish the fact that you can totally pass cinnamon rolls off as breakfast, and can even pretend they are healthy because they have pumpkin in them. That's sure to bring out a smile.