Chocolate Pumpkin Streusel Bars

Hi all– November baking often ends up one pumpkin recipe after another.  I can’t help it.  And my absolute favorite pumpkin baking event is stirring up 30 loaves of pumpkin bread with my 4th graders the day before our Thanksgiving break!

It’s a pumpkin-palooza! Five teams of bakers are skittering up to my supply table for sugar, eggs, pumpkin, mini chocolate chips (their favorite ingredient)– Eggs are cracking and flour is flying!! I always have to apologize to the janitor at the end of the day.

It’s just great to send them out the door for their Thanksgiving break with that pumpkin-y loaf to share with their family.  They are so proud.

But back to this recipe!  It involved a more sedate baking situation– me alone in my kitchen–less exciting, but even more delicious. And this time it’s tender, streusel topped little pumpkin laced cakes, topped and filled with chocolate bits, little sweet taste of Thanksgiving.

CHOCOLATE PUMPKIN STREUSEL BARS

Streusel:
2/3 cup flour
2/3 cup brown sugar
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
6 tab. butter
1/2 cup mini chocolate chips*

Cake:
2 cups flour
2 tsp. pumpkin pie spice
1 tsp. baking powder
3/4 tsp. salt
3/4 cup canola oil
3/4 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup white sugar
1 egg
2 tsp. vanilla
1 cup pumpkin puree
1 cup mini chocolate chips

First, prepare the streusel.  Mix together the 2/3 cup flour, 2/3 cup brown sugar and  cinnamon.  Then with a pastry blender (or two forks) cut in the butter until it resembles coarse sand.  Stir in the 1/2 cup chocolate chips.  Set this aside.

In a new mixing bowl, stir together the 1 cups flour, pumpkin pie spice, baking powder and salt.  Then mix in the oil, white and brown sugar, egg, vanilla and pumpkin.  Fold in the chocolate chips.

Spoon the mixture into a 9″ x 13″ baking dish that has been sprayed with cooking spray.  Sprinkle the streusel over the stop and pop it into a 350 degree oven for 30 to 35 minutes until the bars are firm to the touch.

Let them cool a bit and the cut into tidy little squares.  Pumkin-y good.

*I had a nice chocolate bar someone had given me so I chopped it and mixed it in with the mini chocolate chips for the topping on the streusel.