13 Reasons you'll love Halloween Time at the Disneyland Resort

Fall is here, and it's once again Halloween Time at the Disneyland Resort! This really is my favorite time of the year to visit. I've already written about why I love fall at Disneyland so much.  This year, I'm just going to bombard you with gorgeous photos of the resort, because a picture is worth a thousand words. Here are 13 reasons (all photographic!) that you should go:

Pumpkin Chocolate Cheesecake Bars

I had some pureed pumpkin left over from last week's Pumpkin Cranberry Cookies, and since those were gobbled up pretty quickly, I decided to make another pumpkin baked treat.  After all, there's no sense in letting perfectly good pumpkin puree go to waste!  I just happened to have another box of spice cake mix (I always buy cake mix in pairs!), so I went back to The Ultimate Cake Mix Cookie Book -- but I couldn't find the combination of ingredients I was hankering for, so I decided to use the cookbook's basic bar cookie recipe as an inspiration to create my own!

For this treat, I wanted a pumpkin bar cookie, with some cheesecake batter swirled in.  I also wanted to add some chocolate chips, because let's face it, chocolate makes everything taste better. Here's what I came up with.  The name -- Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cheesecake Bars -- is quite a mouthful, but then so is the treat.

Pumpkin Cranberry Chocolate Chip Cookies

It's almost October, and my fall baking season has begun!  I've already stocked up on Trader Joe's pumpkin bread mix, and I've bought lots of pumpkin puree for those other times when I want to bake from scratch.  My first baked treat of the season is a mixture of both:  you start with a cake mix, but you add flour, eggs, and other ingredients to make it your own.  This one is from The Ultimate Cake Mix Cookie Book, and it's called Whole Wheat Pumpkin Breakfast Cookies.  Since it has whole wheat flour and pureed pumpkin, I guess the author figured it was as least as healthy as the breakfast muffins you buy at your local bakery.  I added chocolate chips, so I'm not even pretending that it's anything but a yummy treat :)  These cookies are soft and cakey and super delicious.  However, they're on the dry side -- so you'll want to have them with a cup of tea or a glass of milk!