Tessa’s Recipe Rundown
Taste: The pumpkin flavor plus all those wonderful spices and chocolate is just fantastic.
Texture: Sort of cakey and soft and moist with gooey chocolate chips.
Ease: So completely simple and easy.
Appearance: Anytime there’s chocolate chips involved it’s hard to resist taking a bite.
Pros: Wonderfully easy and healthy recipe for the fall. Can be converted into a vegan recipe.
Cons: None!
Would I make this again? Yes.
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Almost Healthy Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Squares have the flavorful combination of wonderful spices and soothing chocolate.
I did it. I made a pumpkin recipe. The first one of the year! I figured that if Starbucks is selling their pumpkin spice lattes, I could start posting pumpkin recipes because I’m sure there will be many to come. Why are autumn foods so good? I could live off of pumpkin and apple sweets alone. Which reminds me, happy Rosh Hashanah for those who celebrate!
This recipe doesn’t have any butter. It uses whole grain flour. The pumpkin offers vitamins. And there’s about half the amount of sugar. However, there is still sugar and chocolate chips which is why I added the “almost” healthy part.
Almost Healthy Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Squares
Ingredients
- 1 cup spelt flour (or white whole wheat flour)
- 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
- 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
- 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
- 1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 2 large eggs (or egg replacers if vegan)
- 1/2 cup packed light brown sugar (or agave syrup)
- 1 cup pumpkin puree
- 1/4 cup milk (non dairy is fine)
- 1/4 cup coconut oil
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1/2 cup chocolate chips (use vegan chips if necessary)
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line an 8×8-inch pan with parchment paper or foil and spray with nonstick cooking spray.
- In medium bowl combine the flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, allspice, salt, baking powder, and baking soda.
- In a large bowl whisk together the eggs, sugar, pumpkin, milk, oil, and vanilla until smooth. Add the dry ingredients and stir with a rubber spatula until combined. Fold in the chocolate chips.
- Spread the mixture into prepared baking pan and bake for about 25 minutes, or until a cake tester inserted into the center of the pan comes out with just a few moist crumbs attached. Serve warm or at room temperature. Cut into 16 squares before serving.
I make this every fall. They’re wonderful!
I never thought I would find a good recipe that made it so easy! Thank you so much!
I’ve made these twice before and they were amazing each time! I want to bring them to a dinner party and am wondering if it would work to double the recipe and bake in a 9×13 pan?
Also do u think replacing the eggs with a banana will work out as well?
I think rice drink would work fine (though I’ve never baked with it so I’m not 100% sure). You could definitely try using banana as an egg replacement, again I’ve never done that in this recipe so I can’t be certain how they would turn out.
Hi I always make these and they come out fantastic! My son is allergic to wheat, nut, dairy, egg, and gluten and so are his classmates. I want to make this for open house. I was wondering do you think this would work out using rice drink instead of dairy milk?
Just made a delicious variation on this recipe. I didn’t have choc chips, so instead I added 1/2 cup of chopped macadamia nuts and thought to myself, why not add some unsweetened cocoa powder as well?! (About 2 tablespoons I think.) Yummo! Your website is simply lovely. I drool over every single recipe, even the ones I don’t intend on making. And now that I’ve ‘Liked’ your website on Facebook I get all your new recipes delivered straight to my news feed page. Regards, one happy little cook from Australia 🙂
Pumpkin treats are so much fun to bake! My garden is trying its darndest to grow pumpkins so hopefully I’ll get a couple of nice ones to bake into this treat!
yay for pumpkin recipes!! your pumpkin chocolate chip squares look fantastic.
It’s 90 degrees here and all I can think about are pumpkin and apples…love this. And yes…there is health here!
Hi Tessa,
Is there a replacement for the coconut oil? I’m not sure how readily available coconut oil is in Canada.
Thanks!
It’s available in most supermarkets or health food stores here in the U.S. but if you can’t find it you can use vegetable oil.
These look great. I often make Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Bread. It’s one of the basic recipes out there and I put in chocolate chips, rather than nuts and raisins. Thanks, for posting the Rosh Hashanah wishes (I celebrate the holiday). Which leads me to a question…have you ever made Honey Cake? I made some…it’s a big batch so I have one for now and will bring the other to my neighbors’ for Yom Kippur. If you’ve never made it, it would be fun to read a write up on it. I made the version by Marci Goldman.
These look awesome!! I have a feeling I will be making them very soon 🙂