I love anything with pumpkin…sweet or savory. At Crumbs one of our top-sellers is our famous Pumpkin Cake Tart. I’ve had Americans who lived in Kuwait contact me this time of year during Thanksgiving to say how our tart is the best they’ve ever had and are missing it now that they’ve left Kuwait…what a compliment! So we’ve established that I love pumpkin, and so do many others I’m sure. Now these bars are A-M-A-Z-I-N-G. They did give me a hard time and I had to try several times before I got it just right. But each batch tasted really good so I had no problem going through most of it…and everyone who has tried it thought it was amazing.

Now these bars are vegan and naturally sweetened. They could easily be wheat-free if you replaced the whole wheat flour with spelt flour. They could probably be gluten-free too if you make sure to use gluten-free oats, and replace the wheat flour with buckwheat or a gluten-free flour blend. I might try that soon, which is frankly just an excuse to make them and eat them again.

As usual I need to have a little rant about ingredients and substitutions in case you don’t have everything available….so here goes…

Coconut cream can either be bought as is in a can or carton, however you an also refrigerate a can of regular full-fat coconut milk for 24 hours and the cream will separate from the liquid, and usually you can easily get more than a cup of cream from a can. Store leftover coconut milk in the fridge to use in smoothies or pudding, and any extra cream can be whipped up to make these bars extra special.

I like to use Libby’s pumpkin puree that comes in a can but homemade can work too.

Almond butter can be replaced with cashew butter or even macadamia. For a nut-free version tahini could probably work, and so would pumpkin or sunflower seed butter. Tahini would probably have the strongest change in flavor, so keep that in mind.

If you don’t have date molasses you can easily replace it with another liquid sweetener or even leave it out.
Arrowroot starch is important to give the pumpkin filling more structure. Cornstarch will probably work instead.

Rolled oats or quick oats will both work. I wouldn’t use instant oats though.

Whole wheat pastry flour can be replaced with regular whole-wheat flour or all-purpose.

Coconut sugar can be replaced with regular light or dark brown sugar or date sugar.

Maple syrup can be replaced with honey or molasses.

Use any milk of your choice to replace the almond milk

And you can certainly leave out the walnuts but the crunch makes it more interesting. I’m sure pecans, almonds and hazelnuts would also taste great. Pumpkin seeds would be awesome too.

Now I used a food processor for both the filling and base. The filling will be difficult to make smooth by hand, so a hand mixer could probably work. You can also use a blender, but the mixture is quite thick and you will need to stop and scrape the sides many times. The base can certainly be made by hand.

Okay, I think that’s enough talk..let’s get baking!