Maple Frosted Pumpkin Bars

I wish I could give these more than 5 stars. They're amazing! The fact that you can use the beaters to mix the whole thing makes them so easy to prepare, and they really satisfy your sweet tooth! The frosting is definitely a must. I made these for dessert tonight, and my mom has already asked me for the recipe. I'll be making these again very soon!

Hey Jan, these bars were sooo good!! I wish I could give this recipe more than 5 stars, as that's how good they were. To spice up the bars a bit more, I added 1/2 teaspoon each, of ground ginger and ground cloves, after all, that's the other two spices found in a pumpkin pie, and since this is made w/canned pumpkin, I thought those two spices would work well in this recipe. When I made the frosting, I found I had to add 8 Tablesponns of the maple syrup, but I also think one could add 9 if need be. The next time I make these bars tho, I'm also going to add a 1/2 to 1 teaspoon of Maple Flavoring to the frosting to give it a bit more of maple flavor. I'm not sure how many nuts I topped these bars with; I just sprinkled on how much I wanted, and I lightly tapped them into the frosting with the tips of my fingers, so they would not fall off when removing from the pan. One other thing I wanted to mention here, I found this recipe makes 24 bars rather than 45. Jan, thank you so much for posting this recipe, I know my family's going to just love these bars.

I wish I could give this more than 5 stars too! It was a perfect mix of everything (made exactly to recipe), resulting in moist, delicious, spongey bars which were beautiful on their own but the frosting made them perfect. Yummy, I can't wait to eat the rest later...

Very easy and very yummy. Nice for a fall treat. I found them to be not very pumpkin-y, but are more like a mild spice cake. the frosting is out of this world. I used real maple syrup given to me by a friend who tapped it out of a tree in her yard. Special! Also left pecans off as my kids are not fans of nuts. Will make again as everyone likes these, but will probably amp up the cinnamon and add some cloves and nutmeg. Thanks for a really good one!

Oh - these are SO good. I agree with other reviews in that they REALLY need the frosting. The bars aren't very good by themselves. But, these bland-ish bars are the perfect compliment to the super-sweet frosting! And, the frosting brings out the pumpkin flavor in the bars. I doubled the frosting recipe, and barely covered the entire jelly roll pan of bars. Also, the bars are rather cake-ish - I'm not sure I'd call them bars. I cut mine into 2X2" squares, only got 24 servings/squares. To get as many as the recipe states (45), the squares would have to be small ( about 1X1"). Nevertheless, this is a TERRIFIC recipe! These bars are SUPER YUMMY!