The Daring Bakers, they're killing me. Last week, I was mining my favorite baking cookbook and I swear, without thinking, found myself in the index checking the Ds for Daring.

You see, the Daring Bakers are a group of passionate blogging bakers from across the world who each month, from their own kitchens, cream and caramelize and create the same spectacular somethings. If you were "anywhere" in the food blog world yesterday, yum, did you see those cinnamon buns and sticky buns? These guys really love to bake and it shows.

Me, I love-love-love to bake too, though lean to 'simple', my own definition of spectacular -- especially cakes and cookies and bars and desserts baked on a whim with pantry ingredients.

Enter these simple pumpkin bars -- (1) yes, there really is a 'vegetable' in there so the recipe does qualify for a food blog full of vegetable recipes and (2) yes, you can really put vegetables into desserts. They're about an inch tall, with just the right cake-iness, just the right sweetness, just the right mix of fall spices. Then douse them in a sickly sweet icing -- no wait! don't do that! I sure wish I hadn't. A mere drizzle of icing would have been nice, just a bit of sweet to contrast with the spices. But all that frosting heaviness? Yuck. It got scraped off every single piece.

KITCHEN NOTES

• The inspiring recipe made enough for a 9x13 pan. I halved the recipe (except the spices and vanilla) for a 9x9 or 8x8, a favorite technique for baking for fewer portions with bumped-up flavor.
  
• The inspiring recipe called for browning the butter for the icing. The browned-butter flavor taste was hardly noticeable even with a LOT of icing, so I'd recommend skipping this step, especially if you go with the 'drizzle' idea.

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Today's pumpkin bars are dedicated to my Canadian family who will be celebrating Canadian Thanksgiving next weekend and are already beginning to search for Thanksgiving vegetable recipes and other favorite Thanksgiving recipes, including, the best part of Thanksgiving, eating up the leftovers! Don't miss out on the World's Best Green Bean Casserole and my own two favorites from my 2006 collection of Thanksgiving vegetable recipes, the Maple Ginger Sweet Potatoes and Creamy Carrot Puree.



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