Leah Rodriguez’s Magical Oven and Pumpkin Bars
“Good ingredients in means good ingredients out,” Minnesota native Leah Rodriguez says. She approaches recipes as a foundation of ingredients that you can tweak and make your own. That’s how she came up with a recipe for more delicious pumpkin bars than anyone else—she adds a can of sweetened condensed milk to the batter.
Her instructions say to frost them with cream cheese frosting so here’s my recipe for pumpkin bars and maple cream cheese frosting: https://randomsweets.com/maple-iced-pumpkin-blondies/.
Step into Leah’s warm and inviting kitchen, where baking isn’t just a pastime, it’s a way to honor tradition, celebrate family, and embrace joy and faith even in life’s hardest seasons.
Get ready to laugh and cry in this episode of Funeral Potatoes & Wool Mittens as Leah shares what she puts in her pumpkin bars that make them extra special, a recipe for funeral hot dish with an Asian flare, and how growing up in a family of 11 kids played a part in raising six children alongside her Juan & Only husband.
Listen to Season 3, Episode 7 in any podcast app or in the YouTube (audio only) or Spotify players below.
Leah also tells the story of how her magical oven got its nickname, and she takes us on a flavorful journey of her favorite bakeries near New Richmond, Wisconsin where she lives, including a Mexican bakery and restaurant in Chaska, Minnesota.
Recipes
If you listen to the episode, you’ll learn that Leah bakes a lot. And I don’t just mean a lot of times…I mean she bakes a lot of goodies and shares them with everyone she can.
The following are a few of the recipes she talked about. (Her special pumpkin bars recipe is up near the beginning of this post.)
Applesauce Bars
Banana Bread
Funeral Hot Dish
Crisco Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookies
Here’s the recipe on Crisco’s website.
Mentioned in this Episode
- Keys Café & Bakery 9 locations in the Minneapolis and St. Paul area and Hudson WI.
- Knoke’s Chocolates & Nuts, 218 Locust St., Hudson, WI.
- El Paisano Bakery, 117 W. 4th St., Chaska, MN, 952-361-9337
Sweet wishes,
