The Teaser: The appearance of a pumpkin cinnamon roll, but with the texture of a pumpkin cake and the sweetness of eating brown sugar right out of the bag…
…but in a good way!
The Blurb: Ok, so I’ll be the first to admit that this one doesn’t exactly look the prettiest, but still, as a sweet reward after a long day of unpacking I was willing to overlook aesthetics for the sake of a little mid-spring pumpkin indulgence!  Besides, I had my excuses…

1. Our new house has one of these fancy convection ovens, meaning that it doesn’t have nearly as much room inside as a traditional oven and I ended up using a 9×9 pan instead of the 15×10 that the recipe called for, hence the cake-like thickness.
2. As a result of using said smaller pan, I couldn’t get the thing to cook thoroughly all the way through without burning the edges, hence the somewhat gooey center … although for what it’s worth, I kinda liked it this way.
3. And lastly, the frosting probably needed a little less juice and ended up coming out more liquidy and less spreadable, hence the icing look that is vastly different than the picture … but again, I felt like it gave more of a cinnamon roll icing texture and it wasn’t really so bad!

The Flavor: The pumpkin – mild, but much more desirable when you got near the gooey center; the frosting – very apple-y, but did well to compliment the pumpkin when it wasn’t overpowering it completely!  If I made these again sometime, I’d either want to cut the recipe in half or find a bigger pan that will still work in our oven, and then also just take a bit more time with the frosting to get more of a frosting consistency.

The Recipes (both via pillsbury.com):

• Spicy Pumpkin Bars
• Browned-Butter Apple Frosting (note – it doesn’t actually make mention online, but this frosting was recommended as an alternative to using regular canned frosting in the original cookbook that I found the recipe in)