Harvest Apple Bars (gluten free)

It is the first day of October. My favorite month. The leaves peak with their fall color in my hometown of Pennsylvania in October. I was supposed to be bringing you a pumpkin recipe today. In my mind pumpkin is all that is fall and besides I LOVE everything pumpkin. Pumpkin pancakes, pumpkin muffins, pumpkin cookies, pumpkin carving, pumpkin seeds...you get the picture. I am crazy about this gorgeous gourd. 

 I bought this precious little 1.5 lb organic pumpkin from my local natural foods store.

 It sat on my counter for a few days then I washed it and roasted it. Then pureed it. 

 I heart my Blendtec blender. It makes roasted pumpkin into a perfect puree!

Normally I taste test purees before adding them to a recipe. Not this time. I waited until I used all my precious ingredients and made the batter. Then disaster struck. It tasted like somebody spiked it with battery acid! Then I tasted the puree. It was the puree. Did a kitchen elf throw a AA battery into the Blendtec when my back was turned?!? I have no idea why the puree tasted like it did. I had to gargle with baking soda water just to rid my mouth of the awful taste. I even made Rich try it. Poor guy. I thought my taste buds were going crazy. Nope. Still sane. So I threw out the batter and sulked for an hour. I hate wasting ingredients and I was so excited about having my first fall recipe on the blog none the less made with my own pureed pumpkin. Then I started thinking about my trail mix bars. Maybe I could make those, but I wanted a new blog worthy recipe. The wheels began to turn and thus Harvest Apple Bars were born. These bars are soft and more cake like than the trail mix bars, but not overly sweet. These babies are more breakfast material rather than a shinning dessert. Though I bet they would taste great warmed with some cinnamon ice cream. They can travel easy and could make an appearance at your next play date or over a spot of tea with the girls, or maybe with your afternoon coffee. I do recommend if you have this for breakfast pair it with a serving of protein. Now onto the recipe!

Harvest Apple Bars

1/2 cup of blanched almond flour
1/2 brown rice flour

2 TBS stabilized rice bran

2 TBS blonde palm sugar
2 TBS of ground flax seed

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp cinnamon
Dash of nutmeg

1/4 tsp sea salt

1/4 cup sliced amlonds

1 Macintosh Apple peeled, cored, and chopped

1/2 cup of raisins 

1 egg plus 1 egg white
1/2 cup of unsweetened apple sauce

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

2 TBS of organic sunflower oil

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line an 8x8 square glass baking dish with parchment paper; enough for some to hang over the edges of dish. In a large bowl mix flours, bran, sugar, flax, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, and sea salt.  In a separate bowl mix eggs, vanilla, apple sauce,and oil. Stir together wet ingredients to dry ingredients. Then add apples, raisins, and almonds to mixture. Stir until all ingredients are well combined and spread evenly into dish. Bake for 30 minutes until set. Remove from oven and cool. Once cooled lift up parchment paper out of dish  and onto cutting board then cut into bars. These are stable at room temperature for 1 week or you can wrap them and freeze them. I sprinkled homemade powdered sugar(recipe here) on the bars after they were cooled.