Pumpkin bites! Nibbles of pumpkin love! Little sweets of morning joy!
I wish I could say I wasn’t this shallow, but the prospect of eating about 50 of these little guys is single-handedly what got me out of bed this morning. That, and the fact that I would get to tell you about them.
Pumpkin Bites with Maple Glaze. Definition: tiny two-bite nuggets of pumpkin, oats, and maple syrup baked into a cross between a pumpkin cookie (which, for the record, I have never liked, so if you are hesitant – be encouraged) and a pumpkin scone (which, for the record, I LOVE) and a pumpkin muffin (obsessed).
They’re not as flat as pumpkin cookies, and they’re probably a bit more dense than a fluffy muffin. This makes them some kind of magic cookie-scone-muffin mashup that provides a perfect soft-baked dipper for your morning coffee. And then if you would happen to be some kind of weirdo who STILL isn’t convinced, they are drizzled with my all-time favorite maple glaze. So… do I even need to keep talking?
True fact -> you are one of two kinds of people:
- The person who gets up at the first ringing – or even BEFORE the first ringing – of the alarm clock 🏆
- The person who hits the snooze button 80 million times before eventually just abandoning the Time To Wake Up concept entirely and, as a result, rushing through the morning with what never ever seems to be enough coffee, all the while dreaming of the moment when work is done and you can return to bed 😑
Not that it’s obvious which one I am or anything.
The change in seasons means a lot of things for us here in the blogger’s paradise of Minnesota – like summer grill out and taco nights have turned into fall chili and cornbread nights eaten around the fire with pumpkin dessert plz! and runs around the lake have gone from a have-to to a must-do because of those deliciously sunny + cool temps and the Instagram potential with the colorful trees around every corner, and of course, the people of the internet (self included) are starting their slow return back to regular cooking which means good things for the blog.
Fall energy is all around! We have a lot of love love love for the change of seasons. But there’s one thing about fall that is alllll the thumbs down.
It’s seriously HARD to wake up in the morning.
You look outside and it’s still dark. You take the dog out and it’s just the tiniest bit cold – no more barefooted walking in the yard, my friend. Your coziest sweatshirt + the still-warm fluffy bed becomes THE ONLY THING that you could ever want in your whole life.
If you’re a type two person 🙋 and you also happen to be a blogger who can set their own hours 🙋, this spells major danger.
But if fall means eating more of dis stuff, I mean… just… GIMME.
It’s been a long time since I went to bed excited about what I would eat in the morning for breakfast, but last night, I had that feeling. There was a batch of these freshly-baked and just waiting for morning, so last night I wrapped them up, set them aside, and set my alarm for the earliest possible time that I could manage in order to feed my face with these loves.
Soft-baked, pumpkiny, stuffed with mini chocolate chips, and drizzled with maple glaze – that’s how all my fall mornings are going to start this year.
You and me and the whole world = these pumpkin bites = tomorrow morning. Saturday brunch date. ☕️☕️
Pumpkin Bites with Maple Glaze
Total Time: 22 minutes
Yield: 25–30 pumpkin bites 1x
Description
Pumpkin Bites with Maple Glaze are a MUST for pumpkin lovers! made with easy ingredients like oats, pumpkin, maple syrup, and olive oil.
Ingredients
Scale
For the Pumpkin Bites
- 1 1/4 cup oat flour (see notes)
- 3/4 cup all purpose flour
- 1/4 cup turbinado sugar (more for topping)
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 1/4 cup canned pumpkin
- 1 egg
- 1/2 cup maple syrup
- 3 tablespoons olive oil
- 1/2 cup mini chocolate chips (optional)
For the Glaze
- 2 tablespoons butter
- 1 1/4 cups powdered sugar
- 1 tablespoon maple syrup
- 1 tablespoon milk
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
- Batter: In a large bowl, combine the oat flour, all purpose flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon. In a smaller bowl, whisk the vanilla, pumpkin, egg, maple syrup, and olive oil. Add the wet ingredients to the larger bowl with the dry ingredients – stir until just combined. Add the mini chocolate chips and stir just a few times to distribute them throughout the batter.
- Baking: Scoop small amounts of the batter onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Using a round cookie scoop will help you get the nicest shape to your pumpkin bites. Sprinkle the tops with a little more turbinado sugar and bake for 10-12 minutes.
- Glaze: Melt the butter in a small saucepan over low heat. Stir in the powdered sugar – it will clump together. Add the maple syrup and milk to smooth it out again, whisking to break apart the sugar clumps. Add additional water or milk in very small amounts to achieve desired consistency. When the glaze is smooth and runny, top each pumpkin bite with a drizzle. The glaze should set almost immediately.
Notes
I’m not the kind of person who keeps oat flour on hand, so I just measured several cups of rolled oats into my blender and turned it on for about 20-30 seconds, stopping to stir or shake it around to ensure everything was getting evenly ground up. Then I measured out the amount of oat flour needed for this recipe and stored the rest in an airtight container.
How finely you grind your flour will make a difference in how the batter holds together, so I find it best to go by feel more than exact measurements here. The batter should not spread at all when you scoop it – it should hold the shape of a ball. If it doesn’t, go back and add a little more flour or oat flour until it is sturdy enough to hold. I made this three times, and every time I’d be using somewhere between 1 1/4 cup and 1 1/2 cups of oat flour.
Nutrition information is for ONE bite out of a total of 28, including glaze (that’s exactly how many I got in this batch).
- Prep Time: 10 mins
- Cook Time: 12 mins
- Category: Dessert
- Cuisine: American
Keywords: pumpkin dessert, pumpkin bites, maple glaze recipe
Here’s a link to the little cookie scooper that I have – $12 on Amazon and a 4.5 rating from 300 reviews. I also have one that is a little bigger than this that works well for this recipe, too.
👆This is an affiliate link.