Pumpkin Oatmeal Chocolate Blondies

My mom and I have been attending Weight Watchers for a little over a year, so finding recipes that are healthy and low in Points Plus values is important to us. The Weight Watchers website has a great feature where you can enter up to 3 ingredients that you have on hand and it will search for recipes that contain those ingredients. I knew that I wanted to use pumpkin, and I had some buttermilk that I needed to use up. I entered those ingredients into the search and one of the results was for Cranberry-Pumpkin Bars. This recipe had great reviews and sounded delicious, but I was not really in the mood for using dried cranberries. I decided to leave them out and add chopped pecans and chocolate chips instead, only increasing the Points Plus value by 1. I was afraid these bars weren't going to hold up well, but was happy to be proven wrong. They resembled blondies {or pan cookies, depending on what you call them}, but also had a cake-like texture. Since there's only 3 people in our house, they lasted quite awhile. The last one tasted just as good as the first one. I enjoyed them warmed up, but they also tasted great at room temperature.



Pumpkin Oatmeal Chocolate Blondies (originally Cranberry-Pumpkin Bars)
adapted from Weight Watchers
Yield: 18 servings

What You Need
1 cups packed light brown sugar
4 Tbsp. reduced-calorie margarine, at room temperature
1 cup pumpkin puree
1 large egg
1 large egg white
1/3 cup buttermilk
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups uncooked old fashioned oats {I used quick-cooking instead.}
1 Tbsp. pumpkin pie spice {or 1 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon and 1/4 tsp each ground nutmeg, ginger, and cloves}
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1/3 cup chocolate chips {Original recipe calls for 2/3 cup dried cranberries instead of chocolate chips and pecans.}
1/2 cup chopped pecans

What To Do
~ Heat oven to 350 degrees F.
~ Lightly coat a 9x13 inch baking dish with cooking spray, then dust lightly with flour. {I used Pam baking spray, which has flour in it.}
~ In large bowl, cream sugar and margarine with an electric mixer.

~ Beat in egg, egg white, pumpkin puree, and buttermilk.

~ In medium bowl, combine flour, oats, pumpkin pie spice, baking soda, and salt.

~ Stir into pumpkin mixture just until moistened, then add chocolate chips and pecans {or cranberries} and mix gently.

~ Spread batter in pan and bake 20 to 25 minutes or until center springs back when gently pressed. {Mine took 30 minutes.}

~ Cool and cut into 18 bars.