One of my favorite things about cooking is when I go to make a recipe, realize I’m lacking an ingredient, wing it by throwing in a substitute ingredient I have on hand, and a new, equally delicious recipe emerges. Wowza was this the case with this recipe. It started out as as a recipe for Old Fashioned Carrot Cake Bars, but I had no canned carrots on hand. Insert canned pumpkin and the most delicious pumpkin cake bars I’ve ever had. Ever.
Ingredients for Cake
15 ounce can of pumpkin
2 cups granulated sugar
3/4 cups vegetable oil
1/2 cup applesauce
4 eggs
2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
Ingredients for Icing
3 ounces cream cheese {softened}
1/3 cup butter {softened}
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons milk {I used 2%}
2 cups powdered sugar
Directions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Blend the pumpkin, sugar, vegetable oil, applesauce and eggs together until smooth. In a separate bowl combine with the flour, salt, baking soda and spices together then slowly add the flour mixture into the pumpkin mixture and mix well.
Pour into a greased {or parchment paper lined} 11×18 pan. Bake at 350 for 20-25 minutes or until the center is firm. Cool and then frost with cream cheese icing.
To prepare the frosting, beat all the ingredients together until smooth. Spread over cooled pumpkin cake. Then cut into bars.
Enjoy! {Just try not to eat the whole pan. Sharing is caring!}
~Mavis
This post may contain affiliate links. These affiliate links help support this site. For more information, please see my disclosure policy. Thank you for supporting One Hundred Dollars a Month.