CRUSH IT! Café: Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Bars

These bars are cross between chocolate chip cookies and pumpkin pie and you can’t go wrong with either. Lightly sweet bars with hints of cinnamon, morsels of chocolate and just enough cake. Double the batch if you want to share because they will disappear fast!

Ingredients:

1 whole egg
1 tsp. vanilla extract
½ cup (120g) pumpkin puree
½ cup (120g) unsweetened applesauce
30 mL (1oz.) sugar free pancake syrup
5 tsp. (20g) brown sugar*
1/8 pkg/ ½ serving (12.5g) dry pumpkin pie pudding mix
1 tsp. cinnamon
¼ tsp. baking soda
¼ tsp. salt
½ cup (46g) paleo flour*
2 scoops (68g) Core Nutritionals MRP Snickerdoodle
1 T. (15g) mini semi-sweet chocolate chips

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a medium size mixing bowl, mix wet ingredients: egg, vanilla, pumpkin, applesauce, syrup and brown sugar. Stir to combine. Mix in dry ingredients: dry pudding mix, cinnamon, baking soda, salt, Paleo flour and protein. Fold in chocolate chips. Lightly coat an 8x8 glass baking dish with non-stick cooking spray. Evenly spread batter into pan. Bake for 18-20 minutes. Cool for half an hour and bars will set as they cool. Cut into 9 even pieces and refrigerate leftover bars.

*To reduce carbs to 11g per serving, replace brown sugar with Splenda or other no-calorie sweeter.

*Paleo flour is a blend of nut flours and root starches for a great allpurpose flour alternative. Other flours can be substituted, but might change the taste and texture of the bars.