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Soft and cake-y pumpkin bars with cream cheese swirls are delicious with a side of ice cream! Top them with chocolate chips for extra flavor.
We know from our Pumpkin Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting that pumpkin + cream cheese is a wonderful combo. Pumpkin cream cheese bars have the cream cheese baked INTO the pumpkin, which is even better! Add this to your repertoire of pumpkin recipes—you won’t be sorry!
yummy fall flavors!
Are you sick of pumpkin yet? I’m just making sure that come Thanksgiving you have a ton of pumpkin recipes to choose from. 🙂
This recipe for pumpkin swirl bars is one that I found on Pinterest and made a few changes to. They’re pumpkin “bars”, but the consistency is somewhere in between Pumpkin Brownies and Pumpkin Cake. And they have the most DELICIOUS swirls of cream cheese throughout!
Pumpkin and cream cheese are a match made in heaven. Add a little bit of chocolate on top, and BOOM. You have the ultimate combination of flavors. You can leave the mini chocolate chips on or off—all done according to your preference. Our family definitely loves chocolate so we were sure to leave them on.
Tips for Making Them
PUMPKIN BATTER. Stir together all dry ingredients in a large bowl. Add eggs, pumpkin puree, and oil, stir until combined. Pour and spread batter into an ungreased 15×10 pan.
CREAM CHEESE SWIRLS. With an electric mixer, cream your cream cheese and sugar. Beat in egg and milk. Drizzle over your pumpkin layer. Gently use a knife to swirl the mixtures.
BAKE. Sprinkle chocolate chips on top, if desired. Bake at 350 for 25-30 minutes. If you like, add more chips on the top after cake has cooled for 10 minutes. Cool on wire rack for about two hours.
Variations + Storing Info
Ways to mix it up:
- You can make a gingersnap or graham cracker crust to go underneath your bars.
- You could also mix chocolate chips into your batter.
- To make the cream cheese layer more cheesecake-like, add vanilla extract
STORE this dish in the fridge because of the cream cheese. I would only keep the bars for a week at most. They are super moist, so they might begin to go mushy and gross after a while.
Yummy, yum!! You will definitely love these if you love Pumpkin… and cream cheese… and chocolate!! 😀
For more great Pumpkin recipes, be sure to check out:
- Butter Pumpkin Cake
- White Chocolate Pumpkin Spice Snickerdoodles
- Individual No-Bake Pumpkin Cheesecakes
- Pumpkin Roll
- Mini Pumpkin Pies
Pumpkin Cream Cheese Bars Recipe
Ingredients
- 2 cups all purpose flour
- 1 1/2 cups sugar
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 2 tsp pumpkin pie spice
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 4 eggs
- 15 oz pumpkin puree
- 1 cup vegetable oil
Cream Cheese Layer
- 4 oz cream cheese softened
- 1/4 cup sugar
- 1 egg
- 1 tbsp milk
- 1/2 cup mini chocolate chips
Instructions
- Stir together all dry ingredients in a large bowl. Add eggs, pumpkin puree, and oil, stir until combined. Pour and spread batter into an ungreased 15×10 pan.
- With an electric mixer, cream your cream cheese and sugar. Beat in egg and milk. Drizzle over your pumpkin layer. Gently use a knife to swirl the mixtures. Sprinkle chocolate chips on top.
- Bake at 350 for 25-30 minutes. Add more chips on the top if desired when cake has cooled for 10 minutes. Cool on wire rack for about two hours.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Adapted from Kitchen Meets Girl.
Can I freeze these bars?
When you made this in a 15×10 pan, did you use a cookie sheet kind of pan, jelly roll pan, or a sheet cake kind of pan?
YUM!
My family loved these. They look like you know how to cook something really nice.