Pumpkin Roll Bars

We made another yummy pumpkin recipe yesterday.  It is supposed to taste like pumpkin roll without all the work.

My little helpers dumping the ingredients in.

In a bowl, beat together 6 tablespoons melted butter and 1 1/2 cups sugar until smooth.  Beat in 2 eggs, 1 (15 oz.) can pumpkin, 1 teaspoon vanilla and 1/4 cup water until well blended.

 

In a separate bowl mix 2 cups flour, 2 teaspoons cinnamon, 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves, 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger, 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg, 1 teaspoon baking soda, 1/2 teaspoon baking powder and 1/4 teaspoon salt.

Add the dry ingredients to the pumpkin mixture and combine until well blended.

In a bowl, beat 8 ounces cream cheese (softened), 1 egg, 1/4 cup sugar, and 1/2 teaspoon vanilla until smooth.

Pour 2/3 of the pumpkin batter in a greased 9x13 pan, then spread cream cheese mixture on top and dollop the remaining pumpkin batter and spread as best you can on top.  Then take a table knife and swirl the cream cheese and top layer of pumpkin together.

Bake for 30-35 minutes at 350 degrees.

Cool completely (if you can) and cut into bars.

 They ALL thought it was very good.  It was pretty good, but I don't think it was exactly like Pumpkin Roll.....it had the cream cheese mixture with the pumpkin, but I think it needed more of the cream cheese mixture.  I may try this recipe again and double the cream cheese mixture, I think that would help.  Way easier than pumpkin roll though and the kids loved it!

 

Indian Corn Wreath

The next couple of weeks, we will be talking about Thanksgiving and being thankful.  Yesterday, we made some Indian Corn using bubble wrap, paint and paper.  I made a "glove" out of the bubble wrap for the children to put their hand in.....this works great to dip in the paint and then stamp on their paper.  I have always LOVED stamping with bubble wrap, the texture is very cool and can be used for different art projects

Bubble wrap glove......staple around the outside and leave an opening for their hand to go into.

Red, yellow, orange and brown paint

Then let the children start stamping.

Once they were dry, we cut out two ears of corn from each paper, added some construction paper corn silks and made it into a wreath.  I really love the way it turned out!  We may add what they are thankful for around the wreath or just leave it the way it is.....I will let the children decide tomorrow.

Since we used bubble wrap and had some extra, we of course had to pop some!  The children started off by jumping on it.

 

 And then I cut it up and let them pop it with their fingers......along with being fun, it is a great way to use those fine motor skills!

It doesn't matter how old you are, bubble wrap is always FUN!!!!

Bats, Spiderwebs, and Pumpkin....oh my!

Today, we celebrated Halloween a little bit.  Tomorrow we have library, so I wasn't sure how much we would be able to do.

 

We started off by making these cute little bats.

Take an egg carton and cut apart so each child has a section of 3 cups.  Then have them paint black.

When they are dry, add wiggly eyes and ribbon or string to hang up.  I let the children choose where their eyes go!

Pretty cute!!!

Along with celebrating Halloween, we always have to have some fun food.  I made everything ahead of time cause I wasn't sure if we would have time for it all.  These spider webs were super easy and the kids LOVED them!  Just take stick pretzels and lay them on wax paper to resemble a web. Then melt white chocolate, put in a ziploc baggie, snip the corner and drizzle on the pretzels like I did below.

The spider is a raisin with chocolate legs.

To stay with our pumpkin theme, I made a pumpkin dip, you can find the recipe here.  Definitely not a favorite of the kids......I think only 1 of them liked it......for me, it was ok, not something I could eat a lot of.  Now, I'm gonna have to figure out what to do with it cause it makes a pretty large batch......maybe I can add it to a cake mix and make some cupcakes??

I had a couple kiddos gone today, so I had a smaller group than normal.

Pumpkin Pie Crecent Rolls

While our pumpkin seeds were in the oven yesterday, we made another little snack.  Of course, it's another pumpkin recipe......pumpkin pie crescent rolls.

 

My little helpers!!!

 

1 cup pumpkin

 

4 oz. (1/2 block) cream cheese 

1-2 T Pumpkin pie spice

3-4 T sugar

Beat the ingredients until fluffy and creamy.  Then unroll crescent rolls and cut in half lengthwise.  Spoon a generous amount of filling on the crescent roll and roll up.

Then mix together 4 T sugar and 1 T pumpkin pie spice and roll each pumpkin pie crescent roll in it.

Bake at 375 degrees for 13-15 minutes.

Then enjoy!!!!

 All but one child loved them and asked for more.  I thought they were delicious!!!

 

 

 

These start with 2 tubes of refrigerated crescent rolls.   Roll each crescent roll out and cut lengthwise in 2.   This recipe will make 32 mini crescent rolls.   Each crescent roll will get a generous teaspoon of this pumpkin pie filling:

4 oz. (1/2 block) of cream cheese
1 cup of canned pumpkin
1 - 2 T pumpkin pie spice (adjust as you like!)
3 - 4 T sugar (granulated or powdered)

Beat the above ingredients together until fluffy and creamy and spread one teaspoon of filling over each triangle of dough.  Then roll up.

 

Mix together 4 T sugar and 1 T pumpkin pie spice and roll each pumpkin pie crescent roll in it!  Then bake at 375 degrees for 13-15 minutes.