Fudgy Pumpkin Spice Bars — Moist pumpkin bars so soft they’re like biting into pumpkin fudge!! The glaze is ahh-mazing!!!
Ultra Fudgy Pumpkin Bars
First I made these bars using lemons, then bananas, now pumpkin. Why not? Everything is better after it’s been pumpkin-ified.
Fudgy is the only word that describes the pumpkin bars. They’re like biting into a piece of super soft pumpkin fudge that’s crossed with the pumpkin equivalent of moist, fudgy brownies.
They’re rich, soft, supremely moist, and tooth-sinkingly dense and satisfying. If you’re looking for a fluffy slice of pumpkin cake, they’re not that. They’re closer in texture to Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Bars, minus the chocolate chips, yet have an even fudgier texture. Funny how that works.
The bars are packed with rich pumpkin flavor and the glaze makes the bars go from really good to life-changing.
Lately I’ve been topping everything I can with the glaze because it’s just that good. The secrets are browned butter and glorious vanilla bean seeds. They’re such powerfully flavored ingredients, and flavor just explodes from the glaze.
Between the warming spices of pumpkin pie spice and cinnamon, coupled with the glaze, I was in fall comfort food heaven. I loved the bars, hoarded them, and was sad to see the last one go.
Ingredients for Pumpkin Spice Bars
To make these moist pumpkin bars, you’ll need:
- White chocolate chips
- Unsalted butter
- Egg
- Granulated sugar
- Vanilla extract
- Pumpkin puree
- Pumpkin pie spice
- Cinnamon
- All-purpose flour
- Salt
- Confectioners’ sugar
- Vanilla bean paste
- Cream or milk
Can I Use Pumpkin Pie Filling Instead of Puree?
You could possibly use pumpkin pie filling rather than pumpkin puree if you were to re-adjust the sugar ratios and experiment with things. However, the two aren’t interchangeable as written.
How to Make Glazed Pumpkin Spice Bars
These really are the BEST pumpkin bars I’ve ever eaten. Here’s an overview of how they’re made:
- Melt the white chocolate in the microwave, then stir in the egg, sugar, and vanilla.
- Add the pumpkin and spices, followed by the dry ingredients.
- Turn the batter into a greased and foil-lined 8×8-inch baking dish. B
- ake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out mostly clean, or with a few moist crumbs, but no batter.
- In the last 10 minutes of baking, make the vanilla browned butter glaze. The glaze can be poured onto the bars while they’re still warm.
After pouring the glaze over the warm bars, it seeps down and soaks in, and makes the bars even moister, softer, and fudgier. As a bonus, they taste even better on the second and third day, if they last that long!
Can I Double This Recipe?
Very easily! Simply double the ingredients and use a 9×13-inch baking dish.
Can I Substitute the Glaze?
A few readers have commented saying they swapped out the brown butter glaze for more traditional cream cheese frosting. While I love the glaze as is, you’re more than welcome to top the pumpkin bars with cream cheese frosting if preferred.
I recommend making this cream cheese frosting recipe, if you want to go the homemade route. (You’ll need to halve the recipe!).
How to Store Pumpkin Bars
Bars will keep airtight at room temperature for up to 1 week, or in the freezer for up to 6 months.
Recipe Variations to Try
- Sub the glaze: Try frosting the pumpkin spice bars with cream cheese frosting instead of the browned butter glaze.
- Adjust the spices: I wasn’t shy with the pumpkin pie spice in this recipe, so feel free to add less (or more!) as you see fit.
- Use homemade pumpkin puree: Just note that homemade puree is sometimes thicker than the canned stuff, so you may need to tweak the ingredients slightly if the batter is too thick.
- Add mix-ins: These spiced pumpkin bars are perfect as is, but I imagine mini chocolate chips or finely chopped nuts could be stirred into the batter if desired.
Tips for Making Fudgy Pumpkin Bars
Browning the butter: If you’ve never browned butter, read this tutorial. The 5 minutes it takes to do is the best 5 minutes you’ll spend all month. I used vanilla bean paste but scraping the seeds of a vanilla bean works.
Vanilla: Vanilla extract is okay, but won’t be as flavorfully intense as paste or seeds.
White chocolate: Be very careful when melting the white chocolate in the microwave. It’s very prone to scorching and seizing up, so watch it carefully and don’t overheat.
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Fudgy Pumpkin Spice Bars with Vanilla Bean Browned Butter Glaze
Ingredients
Bars
- ¾ cup white chocolate chips
- ½ cup unsalted butter, 1 stick, melted
- 1 large egg
- ½ cup granulated sugar
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1 cup pumpkin puree
- 1 tablespoon pumpkin pie spice
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1 ¾ cups all-purpose flour
- pinch salt, optional and to taste
Glaze
- ¼ cup unsalted butter, browned (how to brown butter tutorial
- 1 heaping cup confectioners’ sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste
- pinch salt, optional and to taste
- about 1/4 cup cream or milk, or as necessary for consistency
Instructions
Make the bars:
- Preheat oven to 350F. Line an 8-by-8-inch baking pan with aluminum foil, spray with cooking spray; set aside.
- In a large, microwave-safe bowl add the white chocolate, butter, and heat to melt, about 2 minutes on high power. Stop to check and stir after 1 minute, and then heat in 20-second bursts, stopping to stir after each burst, until mixture can be stirred smooth. White chocolate is very prone to scorching and seizing up, so watch it carefully and don’t overheat.
- Wait momentarily before adding the egg so you don’t scramble it. Add the egg, sugar, vanilla, and whisk until combined.
- Add the pumpkin, pumpkin pie spice, cinnamon, and whisk until combined.
- Add the flour, optional salt, and stir until just combined; don’t overmix.
- Turn batter out into prepared pan, smoothing the top lightly with a spatula.
- Bake for about 30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out mostly clean, or with a few moist crumbs, but no batter. In the last 10 minutes of baking, make the glaze.
Make the Glaze:
- Brown the butter (click for tutorial). Cook butter over medium-high heat in a small saucepan until it’s amber to brown in color, about 5 minutes depending on pan size, but watch it closely so you don’t burn it. I swirl the pan in the last minute or so to make sure I can really see the color changes. Butter will go through stages of hissing, sputtering, and making noise until the water cooks off at which point the browning occurs. Butter will smell nutty and aromatic.
- Transfer butter, including brown bits at the bottom of the pan (they’re flavor powerhouses, keep them) from pan to large mixing bowl which stops any carryover cooking.
- Add the confectioners’ sugar, vanilla bean paste, optional salt, and slowly add the milk, whisking until smooth or beat with a handheld electric mixer. As necessary, add additional cream (or confectioners’ sugar) to reach desired glaze consistency. Glaze should be of medium thickness and easily pourable.
- Evenly pour glaze over bars (they don’t have to be cooled first), smoothing it lightly with a spatula if necessary, but glaze will likely just slide into place.
- Allow bars to cool in pan uncovered for at least 2 to 3 hours, (or overnight and cover with a sheet of foil) before slicing and serving so glaze can set up.
Notes
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
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More Pumpkin Spice Desserts:
If you haven’t already pre-ordered it, Cooking With Pumpkin: Recipes That Go Beyond the Pie is my second cookbook. There are over 50 pumpkin recipes including sweets, savory, drinks, and a photo for nearly every recipe. I’d be super grateful if you headed over to Amazon.
Soft Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Bars — Super soft and are like biting into a piece of rich pumpkin fudge! Loaded with chocolate and crazy good!!
Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Bundt Cake with Chocolate Ganache – The softest, moistest and best pumpkin cake! Easy & everyone loves it!
Cream Cheese-Filled Pumpkin Bread — Pumpkin bread that’s like having cheesecake baked in! Soft, fluffy, easy and tastes ahhhh-mazing!
Soft Pumpkin Praline Bars – SUPER soft pumpkin bars studded with chocolate chips, candied pecans, and plenty of pumpkin pie spice!! A FAST and EASY dessert that feeds a crowd for your fall and winter celebrations!!
Pumpkin Banana Bread with Browned Butter Cream Cheese Frosting – Soft, fluffy and so much better than another loaf of plain banana bread!
Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies — Between the molasses, pumpkin pie spice, and pumpkin pie spice extract that I used, these pumpkin chocolate chip cookies beautifully showcase the flavors of fall!
Pumpkin Spice Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting — Moist pumpkin cake is topped with a creamy homemade cream cheese frosting. This easy fall dessert is perfect for Thanksgiving, Halloween, and more!
I agree…everything needs to be pumpkin-vied! Of course, adding brown butter to things helps too ;)
adding brown butter to things helps too ;) <--- ALWAYS!! :)
Oh, I love these!! I love that you melt the white chocolate with the butter. Genius!! Pinned!
melt the white chocolate with the butter <--- I do that to keep them lite and low-cal :)
Lemon, banana, pumpkin… keep ’em coming! These look phenomenal. And I can’t get over that glaze. I will be trying these soon. Thank you!
Amazing! I was surprised to see white chocolate in the batter, but I supposed that is what makes them fudgey :) Also, I love the little vanilla bean specks in the glaze. Gorgeous.
The white chocolate yes makes them fudgy and also gives them some sweetness that you can’t get from using sugar…both a texture thing for density and a taste thing!
You and I are kindred spirits with wanting things fudgey/chewy rather than cakey and for me this is especially true with pumpkin bars and cookies. Thank goodness for you coming up with all these wonderful treats that I can make!
LMK what you end up trying!
I want to bathe in that glaze.
So, I got pumpkin powder the other day because I was curious about it and now I think I need to make some kind of pumpkin-y fudge-y dessert. With white chocolate, obviously, because you’ve turned me on to it and now it is far above milk chocolate in my chocolate ranking. Still behind dark, but barely.
I didn’t even know pumpkin powder existed! Buttermilk powder about 3 years ago for me was the last new powder I discovered that I didn’t even know about. I wrote a cookbook about pumpkin and didn’t know about pumpkin powder..crazy! I can see you making something Katie-ish with it, with white choc, some sort of smoothie-ish bowl of something!
if yo can make these bars with lemon then bananas and now pumpkin then they truly must be the perfect bar! So versatile. I love the hints of vanilla bean with the pumpkin flavor throughout! Yum
Super versatile and I love them all :)
These look stunning – almost like straight fudge! And the thicker and fudgier bars are – the better!! Love that the glaze has browned butter and vanilla bean – yum! Pinned :)
Thanks for pinning! And yes, the thicker and fudgier bars are – the better!!
what if no vanilla bean handy-wil it still work
I’m all about fudgy bars, Averie! Your description sounds fabulous! And the browned butter glaze looks irresistible. Pinned!
Thanks for pinning!
They definitely look like something I could sink my teeth into. Vanilla bean adds such a pop of flavor. I love it!
Beautiful. Pinned.
Have a sweet day!
Thanks for pinning!
You should be a motivational speaker! Reading this post, you had me convinced that if there was one thing I had to do today, it was make/eat these–of course, I guess that would be the logical thing to do anyway right? Anyway, these look to die for! I’ll have to squeeze them into my fall baking somehow!
Well that’s awesome and I did my job then! Truth be told, I used to sell timeshare. I could sell snow to eskimos pretty convincingly but seriously, these are one of my personal favorites!!
Your banana fudgy bars were just sinfully good, but now I’m going to have to try these ones! You’re so right about the vanilla bean glaze! I could pour it over just about anything…
If you try these, LMK which you like better…such a tough call!
Just stumbled across your blog – i think I just found my new favorite blog!! Really love the goodies you bake, I’m so happy I found you!
Well thanks and LMK if you end up making anything!
I think these pumpkin bars look the best of the three! So chewy and delicious looking, girl. Yum!
Thanks, it was a hard 3 to pick from, that is for sure :)
I love what you do with brownie-style bars, Averie! This one is a must-bake. As in, I’m baking it later today!
Reall?! Well please LMK how it goes!! and what you think!
Ok you just have to stop….these looks so yummy…my list of your recipes is growing especially now that I have the pumpkin cookbook…I’m going to need time off from work just to bake everything I want to!!!! I also need a larger family to eat it all….these bars look so moist and I love that vanilla bean icing.
Now THESE SHOULD HAVE been in the pumpkin cookbook. It’s so hard because I keep coming up with things that I wish were in the book but that was ‘closed’ for new recipes almost 18 mos ago and there were no where in my head back then!
Trust me, I have to donate 95% of what I make. But these, I kept for myself :)