Pumpkin Pie Bark

By: Lucia and Gillian

Rating: ***

Recipe

The recipe for pumpkin pie bark is written on the website as follows:

Ingredients:

• 1 15 ounce can pumpkin
• ¼ Cup real maple syrup
• 2 tsp pumpkin pie spice (cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, allspice)

Combine pumpkin with maple syrup and pumpkin pie spice. Use real maple syrup for best results. Stir until ingredients are mixed well. You don't need to use a blender.

Spread thinly (about eighth inch) on dehydrator trays covered with Excalibur Paraflexx® sheets, parchment paper, or the fruit leather inserts that go with your dehydrator.

Dehydrate at 135° for eight hours until brittle.

After about five hours, flip the bark over as follows: Place a spare dehydrator tray on top of the Bark and flip the two trays over so that the bottom side of the bark is now facing up. This will ensure complete drying.

Yield: One 15 ounce can of pumpkin barks down to 1½ cups weighing four ounces.

No-Crust Pumpkin Pie/ Pumpkin Pie Pudding

Serves 1

Ingredients:

• ½ Cup Pumpkin Pie Bark
• ½ Cup water

Pumpkin Pie Bark dissolves in hot or cold water. If you want hot pie or pudding, stir the Bark with hot water until creamy. The mixture comes out to be more like a pudding, however it is thick enough to shape into a wedge of pie.

For larger servings, combine with an equal quantity of water.

Garnish with chopped walnuts or pecans if desired.

Helpful Hints/Our Comments

In our experience of making this recipe, we found that if you make a double batch it will not dehydrate properly. The bark will turn out pliable and harder to chew than it otherwise would have. In our first attempt making the recipe, it also turned out to be too bitter because we forgot to put double the spice mix in. It might also be helpful to check the amount of ingredients required several times so that you do not make the mistake of forgetting or putting less/ more ingredients in than required. You need to be very careful when spreading the mixture out on dehydrator trays. You must make sure that it is no thicker than 3mm (⅛ of an inch), otherwise it won’t turn brittle, but rather chewy. It will also not dehydrate in the time frame that it's supposed to.

For our second batch we used the exact amounts listed on the recipe, and were careful to include all of the ingredients. Instead of the listed 8 hours total to dehydrate, the bark took 14 and a half hours to dehydrate total at the listed 135 degrees Fahrenheit. We ended up flipping the bark at the 8 hour mark.  

Recipe taken from:

Backpackingchef.com,. 'Pumpkin Pie Bark'. N.p., 2015. Web. 22 Jan. 2015.