Cubicle kitchen: Snickerdoodle Cookie Bars

Sometimes I don't have time to devote an entire Saturday to baking.  Sometimes I barely have an hour.  On those weeks, it's all about taking something simple, using some shortcuts, and putting my own spin on it.

With the epic Yarn Crawl keeping me busy, this week I decided to trick out a cookie mix.   In this case, Snickerdoodle, which seems to basically be a sugar cookie mix with an additional packet of cinnamon sugar.  All this required was the addition of a stick of butter and an egg.  I still had some pumpkin puree to use, and that seemed to be a complimentary flavor, though I'm not sure you get too much of it. To save even more time, I made them into squares rather than cookies.

These can of course also be made with 'real' dough brought together from scratch.  But whether it's a mix or completely homemade, my coworkers loved them!

Snickerdoodle Bars

Ingredients:

• 1 pouch Snickerdoodle cookie mix
• 1 stick unsalted butter
• 1/4 cup pumpkin puree
• 1 bag Hershey's Cinnamon Chips

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
2. Follow the directions on the pouch for making the dough, substituting the egg with the pumpkin. Mix in about a third of the cinnamon sugar packet into the dough, and stir in the chips.
3. Spread the dough into a 9x13" pan lined with parchment paper.  (Another pan size will be fine.)
4. Sprinkle the top with the remaining cinnamon sugar.  I still had about a third left, but you can add more.
5. Bake until the edges are set and the middle doesn't jiggle.  That's the best gauge I can give, unless you just know when they are done.  This was 15-20 minutes for me.