Pizza, Garlic Knots, Pumpkin Oat Bars

I was super excited about dinner last night and had it planned since Wednesday. I’ve been getting dough from a pizza place a couple blocks away and not only is it wonderfully doughy but there’s more than enough to make both a pizza and at least a dozen garlic knots. I’ve been rolling the knots in garlic that’s fried in butter and I am completely satisfied with the outcome. There were definitely at least 4 more knots in the bowl before this picture was taken. Pizza toppings tonight were red pepper, green pepper, zucchini, spinach, pepperoni and an Italian cheese blend.

The pumpkin bars turned out to be pretty good too. This is the first time I’ve made them and next time I won’t put in as many chocolate chips (Matt can’t understand why I would say such a thing). I reduced the sugar from 1/2 cup to 1/3 cup, and used a mixture of coconut sugar and brown sugar. Next time I want to try to use 1/4 cup of sugar because we’re trying to consume less sugar overall and I’m coming to really enjoy subtly-sweet baked goods.

The recipe calls for making your own oat flour in a food processor which I find mildly annoying because it’s more dishes to wash and the top to my food processor doesn’t seal right, allowing small pieces of things (like flour) to escape and make a mess on my counter. But. It was fine and Matt said he’ll do all the dishes for me. The oat flour ended up a bit more granular than I expected, but I like the texture in the end result. I could use the coffee grinder to get a truer flour from the oats, but because it has to be done in such small batches it’s more annoying and just as messy.

Pumpkin Oat Bars (Adapted from Ambitious Kitchen)

    Dry

• 2.5 cups oat flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp sea salt
• 1.5 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp nutmeg
• 1/4 tsp ground cloves

    Wet

• 1 cup wet pumpkin
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce
• 1/3 cup mixture of brown sugar and coconut palm sugar
• 1 tbs olive oil or coconut oil

    Mix-In

• 1/3 cup chocolate chips + 2 tbs sprinkled on top

Mix dry. Mix wet. Combine dry and wet and fold in choc chips. Bake in 8x8 pan at 350 for 20-25 minutes until toothpick inserted into center comes out dry.