Ahhh, September

September 1 is one of my favorite days of the whole year, because it means the end of the "summer" months and the beginning of the "autumn" months... and there are few things that I love more in the world than I love autumn. Never mind that it's still 85 degrees on a "cool" day here in Athens, Georgia. Never mind that I still pour sweat after walking 3/4 of a mile to class. September brings a promise of better things!

The reason for all the sentimental mush-mush: To celebrate September 1, I decided to bake pumpkin cookies! And better still, I decided to try concocting my own recipe. So I whipped these up in no time, and while the recipe could still use some tweaking to make it perfect, Bob and I were pretty darn happy with these!

Pumpkin Oatmeal Bites

1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1 cup old-fashioned oats
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
Scant 3/4 cup demerara sugar
2 tbs. pumpkin pie spice
1 cup pumpkin purée (I used canned)
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla
Equivalent of 2 eggs (I used Ener-G)
2 teaspoons molasses
Walnuts, raisins, or dried cranberries (optional)

Preheat oven to 350. Combine all the dry ingredients (through the spices) in a medium-sized bowl. Combine the wet ingredients in a separate small bowl. Add the wet ingredients to the dry, and fold together until well combined, adding in the walnuts or fruit, if using. Place by small spoonfuls onto a prepared baking sheet and bake for about 12 minutes. Makes 3 dozen.

These didn't spread out when they baked, which was fine with me. Also, they're not extremely sweet--they remind me of little pumpkin oatmeal breakfast bites or something (hence the name).

I'm crazy about pumpkin, so with fall fast approaching, you will probably start seeing more and more pumpkin recipes on here!