Pumpkin Snicker-doodle Bars

Thanksgiving week is the best.  And by Thanksgiving Week.... I mean WEEK.  I'm pretty sure from the span of last Thursday to this coming Thursday, I am having not one, or two, or three, but FOUR Thanksgiving dinners! From the traditional family gatherings, to track team Thanksgiving, to various service events, I am happy to say I get to enjoy the wonderful combination of turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes and bread rolls four times...... oh wait, I forgot something.... Pumpkin pie!!!!!
      There is really nothing better than that quintessential Thanksgiving dessert.  However, since I am having so many Thanksgiving meals, I need to pace myself.... I need to be in my peak pumpkin pie enjoyment phase on Thursday for real thanksgiving.  That means no pumpkin pie burnout.   So when I brought a dessert to my Thanksgiving get together tonight, I decided that I hold off on making REAL pumpkin pie and just bring some kind of knock-off.... like Pumpkin Pie Snicker-doodle bars.  These are sort of like a "gateway" dessert.... not AS good and addicting as the real thing, but nonetheless extremely delicious and remind me of how much I like actual pumpkin pie.

I got recipe for the Snickerdoodle base and the pumpkin filling from Beantown baker at:
http://www.beantownbaker.com/2009/11/pumpkin-pie-snickerdoodle-bars.html

        However, I made a few modifications.  First off, I should say that I shop at a grocery store that has all the reject food (not sketchy, I promise) and that all they had was medium eggs.... so I used medium eggs instead of large eggs in the recipe. I'm obviously not expecting everyone to go out and buy medium eggs just so they can copy what I did exactly... but just know, if you for some reason have medium eggs like I did...well, It's gonna be okay :) Also, this same store did not have normal butter, so again, I made a slight modification and used butter spread with canola oil. Finally, an actual modification I made that did not arrise from my laziness to go to a different, better stocked grocery store was to add a walnut streusel topping to the top of the bars. For this, I made an oil based streusel (remember, I had no real butter) and it turned out delicious.

Basically, before I put the bars in the oven, I mixed together and crumbled on top.
1/2 cup canola oil
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup walnuts
1 tsp cinnamon

I should also mention that you may have noticed that this recipe is a slight deviation from "healthy" theme that I had going on.  I promise that will be back, I just thought Thanksgiving week could be a bit special. Happy Thanksgiving!!