Pumpkin Baking #1: Granola Bars

Bonjour everyone!

Welcome to my first entry for the Great Harvest Holiday!

Also, yes, I just used French xD

Before I start, I just want to quickly say that I am NOT a good baker (or a good cook for that matter).

I tend to follow recipes just at the first time and then start experimenting. Hint: it usually doesn't taste as good afterwards xD

I even had a time where whenever I baked something with flour in it, I exchanged part of the flour with rice flour because we had it, but it tastes awful and we never used it. Obviously, that resulted into my mother saying, "no, I won't try what you bake." XD

But enough of that, let's finally start with the recipe!

Recipe #1:

Pumpkin Granola Bars

Granola bars are easy because they contain just three ingredients:

Am I the only one who thinks that "date" is a funny translation for that fruit? xD

It doesn't matter what kind of rolled oats or dates you use, but it does matter with the honey. You may want to search for a honey with a weak taste of its own because you will taste stronger honey and if your actual flavor has a rather weak taste of its own, you will taste the honey instead of the flavor. Forest honey, for example, has a strong taste.

I usually use an expensive honey from the wholefood shop in my city (it's a sunflower honey, if I remember correctly), but because I thought we had everything ready I didn't buy it and so, I had to take another. The one I used in this recipe is okay. You still taste it, but definitely not as much as a forest honey.

And you'll need the flavor you want to have for them. (Obviously.)

It's usually ½ cup per flavor you want to have (sometimes also ¼ cup). I can't calculate that into grams because a cup of every ingredient is different.

But ahem, anyways, since the challenge wants pumpkin sweets, I'll obviously use a pumpkin for flavor:

As you may have seen on Discord, I bought two smaller pumpkins (that one is one of them) and two bigger pumpkins. They are also in the background.

The small ones are Hokkaido pumpkins and from what I remember about pumpkins, they're really good for baking and such, so I'll use those pumpkins for the "better" recipes. (Can't believe I just categorized them into "good" and "bad" recipes XD)

Anyways, you'll need...

The ingredients switch from grams to cups and back within 9 seconds, so if you use either system, both are displayed ^^

I'll be using grams throughout the recipe though.

Soo...

Step 1:

Take a bowl and weigh 112.5 grams (thank you America) rolled oats. I'll be using twice the amount of everything here (except for the pumpkin) because I also make some granola bars for my mother because she's been nagging me for quite some time already xD

Then throw them onto a baking tray because we're going to toast them.

Toasting them is easy, yet a bit tricky.

If you don't use a baking parchment, then you have to watch out for them because they are done very fast, 3 to 5 minutes.

If you use a baking parchment (like I did), then you have some time before you have to get them out again because they need about 10 minutes then.

Either way, they're ready once you can smell them.

You put them in the oven at 175°C (or 350°F, if you will) for the time I said above, depending on what you use. Or don't use xD

Tick, tock, tick, tock...

Aaand the oats are done! 

Put them somewhere where they can cool down.

Also, fun fact: toasted rolled oats aren't called exactly that, they're called "granola" instead. Which is exactly the reason why these bars are called "granola bars" and not "muesli bars". ^^

Step 2:

Now we're working with the dates. If you did use parchment paper, you can do this while the oats are still in the oven.

You can either take the bowl you used before or take another bowl (a special bowl) and weigh 180 grams of dates. Feel free to use one or two dates more if you still need to puree them, like me.

For pureeing them, you cannot use any mixer there is. Dates are really sticky, so the 'knife' of mixer has to be below the dates. A smoothie mixer, for example, is really good for that. A hand mixer however isn't. The dates will just stick to the knives and it's a pain to get them pureed.

Keep pureeing them until they look like this beautiful ball. My ball is actually too stiff, they should be like a smooth paste instead of this ball, but honestly, this ball works just as well. (Maybe my dates are just old lol)

Step 3:

This is actually some I did at a later point of time, but it's more efficient doing it now.

Now, you'll take the pumpkin and get it ready to be added to the mix.

To be frank, I don't know pumpkins. I know they exist and I know how they look like, but I have never used them for eating purposes, so I miscalculated here.

I also don't have many pictures of that because my hands were dirty xD

Anyways, after hollowing the pumpkin out and scratching the inner walls a lot, this is what I gathered from my adorable hokkaido pumpkin:

Those are 65 grams (without the round thing) and tbh, that is definitely not enough. Even worse, it has a soft texture which is really not good for this recipe. You will see why.

Step 4:

Throw the date ball back into the bowl with which you had weighed the oats.

No matter if you've used baking parchment or not, the oats should be cooled down by now, so throw them in there as well (but make sure not to miss the bowl when throwing! XD).

Then, use that bowl to add 75 grams of honey.

Add the pumpkin and nooooow... mix them! 

With your hands.

The dates and the honey are really sticky (especially the dates), so I don't think any machine will be good enough to properly mix them.

Which is why you have to use your hands! 

I promise, they will look beautiful after that and your parents will thank you for whatever you touch with them xD

Like with everything, being exact with measuring is important. Too little of honey or dates and the ingredients won't mix properly and it's not one smooth pastry, but small little pieces that don't want to stay together. It also doesn't taste that well.

Now, as I said, I used twice the amount, so I did not add pumpkin yet because my mom wants peanut butter granola bars. But since this is the time to add the flavor now, I divided the pastry into two pieces.

So, I out away one half and added the pumpkin to the dough. After kneading it, I hollowed the pumpkin out a bit more to get more pulp, and after mixing it all, it looks like this:

And now, you can see the problem with the soft texture. It combines with the pastry and the flavor mostly disappears. This is the problem with all soft ingredients, btw. If you want too add soft fruits, like bananas or strawberries, they have to be dry. Otherwise, you can use fresh fruits.

But not only that, the texture also becomes more fluid and that's annoying when you eat them.

Step 5:

Now that the pastry is ready, you'll need something that you can store in the cold because they are going to freeeeeeeeeze. Literally anything is fine, but I'll be using a casserole. We have them and they are small and fancy lol

This time, use a baking parchment to cover everything because - again - the pastry is really, really sticky and you'll have a hard time getting it out again.

After you added the parchment, put in the pastry and press the pastry into the form until it's all even.

Theeeeen... you put it into the refrigerator for 15-20 minutes. This helps hardening the pastry a bit, so that you'll have it easier to cut it.

Step 6:

After the time is over (it doesn't really matter for how long you put it into the refrigerator; even if you accidentally leave in there for a day), take it out of the refrigerator again and get yourself something where you can cut it on.

Then take it out of your bowl/plate/casserole/whatever and cut it however you want!

Step 7:

Enjoy!

Because the pumpkin puree made my pastry soft, it's still soft after the freezing time which can be annoying, but they're still delicious :3

Afterword:

This thing has probably more than 7 steps, but I think that this is a good breakdown.

Anyways, it was nice making some granola bars again and I finally had an excuse (or rather, motivation?) to finally make the granola bars for my mother XD

Out of all the recipes, this is one of the ones I have done the most, so the others may have more steps indeed.

And I probably did this wrong because it's not really a "pumpkin recipe", but a different one where I just exchanged the ingredients with pumpkin :3

Like how almost all of the recipes are going to be, except for one - if I can get my hands on it.

The base recipe of this is from the Domestic Geek, btw.

And that concludes my first entry for the challenge!

I do hope that you find the time to try he recipe because I think that the granola bars are really delicious!

Lemme just leave this here... uwu

~~~

Also, nobody realized that the pastry in the images of step 5 is actually the peanut butter pastry because I forgot to take pictures of that xD