These pumpkin squares are a great pumpkin pie alternative! Slightly easier to make than my Classic Pumpkin Pie, way easier to eat (handheld treats for the win!), and so tasty! I also include an optional sugar pecan topping to add a little more sweetness (or you can just top it off with some vegan whipped cream)! If you try out this recipe, please share it with me by commenting here or on my YouTube channel, or even tagging me in a photo on Instagram @plantsnotplastic. I read every comment and love hearing from you. Enjoy!
Pumpkin Pie Bars (with Sugar Pecan Topping!)
Equipment
- 8x8 or 9x9 baking dish
- Blender or food processor
Ingredients
Oatmeal Pie Crust
- 1.5 cups rolled oats
- 1/2 tsp salt optional but recommended
- 2 tbsp sugar optional but recommended; sub date sugar or paste
- 2 tbsp almond butter
- 7-9 tbsp water
Pumpkin Filling
- 15 ounces pumpkin puree one can or one small sugar pumpkin, baked and prepared
- 1/4 cup unsweetened plant milk sub water
- 2 tbsp sugar sub with sugar alternative
- 2 tbsp brown sugar sub with sugar alternative
- 1/4 cup cornstarch
- 1 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1/2 tsp powdered ginger
- 1/8 tsp ground nutmeg
- 1/8 tsp ground cloves
- 1/4 tsp salt
Optional Topping
- 1 tbsp brown sugar sub sugar alternative
- 1/4 cup chopped pecans sub walnuts or pepitas
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 Fahrenheit.
- Pulse crust ingredients in a blender or food processor until crumbly, then press into the bottom of your baking pan. Bake for 10 minutes.
- Mix together the filling ingredients together in your blender or food processor until smooth and even.
- If using the sugar pecan topping, mix together on the side.
- Pour your filling over the top of the crust, spread evenly, and then sprinkle the topping evenly overtop.
- Bake for 45 minutes or until a toothpick or knife comes out of the center clean.
- Let cool on the counter until you can transfer to the fridge too cool completely before slicing.
- Slice into even pieces, serve and enjoy!
Notes
Video Transcript:
i am just going to make three pumpkin recipes for you today so that you can have them for the holiday season
i had a whole plan for the holidays and was going to be doing weekly videos that were recipes very similar to like i did last year over thanksgiving and christmas i released a lot of holiday recipes but i’m not doing that this year so instead i am just gonna make three pumpkin recipes for you today so that you can have them for the holiday season i’m gonna be doing pumpkin pancakes um pumpkin muffins with a streusel topping and then um pumpkin pie bars for the pumpkin pancakes they are really really similar just to my banana oatmeal pancakes but instead of using banana we’re gonna be using pumpkin and then adding some holiday spices to them for the pumpkin pie bars those are really really similar to my pumpkin pie recipe which i love it’s one of my favorite holiday recipes the last one the the pumpkin muffins with the streusel topping that is pretty similar to my blueberry muffins there definitely are some tweaks but the base recipe is similar and then the streusel topping is really really simple and very tasty i am thinking that i may do an apple pie test it over thanksgiving and release it before christmas so if that’s something you’re interested in and you’re looking forward to something that would be like a dutch apple pie let me know in the comments i’m also going to be doing some photo shoots for these recipes for the blog so i’ll show you a little bit of behind the scenes for that i am also snacking on a uh a chocolate bundt cake uh with my morning tea before i have pumpkin pancakes which are also very sweet i just i got this yesterday and i’m trying to finish it off oh also if you are looking for more savory recipes for the holidays i do have a bunch from last year um i will put a playlist i’ll link it so that you can actually go and check those out for holiday recipes for yourself this year i have like two other kind of side dish they could act as main course holiday recipes that i have tested and i haven’t shot and that’s a shepherd’s pie and a green bean casserole so if you’re interested in those and you want to see those along with the apple pie before the end of this year let me know that in the comments um just so i know whether or not those are recipes that you want to see yeah let’s jump into making the three recipes i’m going to start with the pumpkin pancakes because it is the morning on a weekend and i want something for breakfast um for the photo shoot and in the recipe card itself um i did like a caramel pecan topping with this if you wanted to make it really sweet for yourself it’s really good with the caramel pecan topping it just is very very sweet so it’s probably something that you would only want to do for like a thanksgiving or christmas morning or something like that but do as you please make it as often as you’d like but i’m not going to do that today i’m just going to make the pumpkin pancakes and probably have them with a little bit of maple syrup or agave so again list all the ingredients here this is everything that you need to make this recipe is very simple super tasty and perfect for a holiday breakfast as for the spices some of them are optional like allspice you don’t have to include for a holiday spice mix or you could even buy a pre-made holiday spice mix to just throw in here rather than doing the individual spices you can also add things to this you can put in chopped walnuts pecans chocolate chips to make chocolate pumpkin pancakes so there are quite a few options for what you can do with this you can make it really fun this is a very simple recipe that would be really really easy to make with kids during the holidays as well so like my oatmeal banana pancakes this is really simple everything just goes into your blender and you blend it up to make your batter and then you cook it stove top in a non-stick frying pan homemade pumpkin puree is the best i’ve only done it a couple of times but my favorite other than that is libby’s i just think that the consistency is the best it’s very smooth and it has like the right thickness where i think some other pumpkin purees can end up being kind of soft or wet which makes it a lot harder for you to measure out wet ingredients especially if you’re baking like something like a pumpkin pie i’ve done without lippies before and i’ve had to cook it for way longer in order to get it to actually thicken up so they’re just lippies is my recommendation unless you’re going to do homemade which will have the best flavor
that’s it if you put in a cup and a half of water or plant milk it is going to be kind of a wet batter you can use a little bit less if you like having thicker pancakes i think that not having enough water in them they can get really like like thick like almost patty-like which still tastes good it’s just not my preference i’d say leave it sit for like 5-10 minutes before you try to actually pour it out and make your pancakes we’re going to start with preheating our pan and doing that you just want to wait until you can splash some water into it and the water like dances and then you’ll know that it’s it’s good to go the reason to wait and do that is um if you pour the batter on without having your pan heated up first it’ll spread out too quickly before your batter starts to cook and you’ll end up with like a really sploogey like big flat um not very appetizing pancake whereas if you wait for it to heat up first as soon as you pour it on it’ll even out perfectly into a nice pancake shape and start cooking right away
while we’re sitting here waiting for the pan to heat up you should comment and let me know what your favorite breakfast food is there we go i tend to prefer littler pancakes so i tend to use a quarter cup measuring cup they are going to be fairly small like just a couple inches in diameter but if you want normal size pancakes i would use like a third or half cup measuring cup per pancake they are going to take longer to cook i would recommend doing it on a lower heat so that the edges don’t burn and they do cook through evenly but yeah i just like my absolute favorite um if you follow me on instagram you would have seen when i was like super obsessed with making the oatmeal banana pancakes for myself for breakfast every morning i made little like you know little tiny pancakes where i was just doing a tablespoon of batter each per pancake and made like 20 of them to have for breakfast every morning because i think they cook a lot faster and you end up spending less overall time sitting here watching your food cook and then if you’re making them for a large group of people my top recommendation for keeping everything warm is put your oven on the lowest setting and then put like a non-stick baking pan in there and you can just put your pancakes in there to stay warm while you’re cooking all of them and then once they’re all cooked you can bring them out to the table fresh and hot and good for everybody to eat the first couple are always going to be the hardest to um just because you’re trying to figure out what the right heat is to have your pan on as long as you can get them to flip without sticking that’s probably the biggest thing the batter does save really well it’ll last for at least a few days in the fridge it will be thicker so just keep that in mind that the consistency of your pancakes will be a little bit different they’re still very tasty and they cook up pretty much the same say these are even a little undercooked but i was impatient
but they taste good good for the holiday season good for sharing with family making with kids and you know getting that fall vibe for your breakfast i don’t know why i did that to myself twice the pumpkin squares that we’re going to be doing next are really similar to my pumpkin pie recipe the difference is they themselves are a little less sweet because i do give an optional crumble topping over it’s just like a cinnamon sugar pecan topping that you can do that gives them like a nice crunch it doesn’t really need it it is really good for taking two events so like pumpkin pie you gotta normally have like a plate and you put the whipped cream and you get the fork and all that’s more of like a sit down dessert for the holidays but pumpkin squares are something that’s really good if you’re taking to some kind of a potluck or you want to be kind of a handheld treat for people i also really like that for the the base of my pumpkin pie recipe you actually have to roll out um the crust where this you just squish it into the pan so it’s a lot simpler to make here’s everything that you need to make this recipe i’ll link everything below i didn’t mention it for the first recipe but i will have blog posts for all of this so yeah there’s there’s everything that you need for this one now that i’ve got the oven preheating i am just going to um put together my crust i throw everything into a blender you can use a food processor but you do want something where you can kind of work it because if you don’t if you just have like a normal blender you’re going to end up having to add a bunch of water so it’s good to be able to like pause and work it you want your crust to be crumbly um like just come together but still be pretty wet and then the salt and the sugar optional i think that they are necessary and should be included but you can leave the salt out and then substitute the sugar for something like a date paste or a date sugar if you’re going to use a date paste because it is wet you just want to make sure that you account for that also if you use something like maple syrup you would just want to use a little less water and then the almond butter is necessary for doing a no oil crust it does replace that butter or oil that would give your crust the like flakiness and niceness that crusts usually have it’s not going to be quite as flaky or you know buttery as an oil or butter crust would be but it is a closer to whole food pretty much whole food substitute make sure when you’re buying an almond butter that it doesn’t have oil in it if it’s just no almonds and salt you know so that it’s not processed and you’re not defeating the purpose of doing a no oil recipe and then for the water i give a range because how much water your crust needs is going to vary by the blender that you’re using the temperature that it is um i think even maybe the altitude that you’re in so start with the smallest amount first pulse it see if you can get it to where it’s all sticks together and there’s nothing dry left but that you’re not over doing it to a point where you end up with a wet dough so you can see i have gotten mine to a place where everything is kind of broken up there’s still some whole pieces in there and it’s stuck together but it’s not wet or runny so i’m gonna grab my loaf pan and just put my crust right in here and i just squish out until it’s all nice and even there’s a couple ways to make this maybe a little easier on yourself you do not have to blend the oats at all or you could blend them dry and then mix everything together just if you have a powerful blender it does work well to just put everything in here and blend it or pulse it all together but if you don’t have those tools available to you it is easy to do in just a mixing bowl okay and then we just have to blend up the pumpkin puree and spices and then pour it over the top here scrape down the sides
all right and then i’m gonna add the topping but you can just leave it here it is really really tasty without the topping but the topping just adds that kind of little extra something that i think is really great again if you were making this for other people just rough chop this and you can just put this over the top but i like to add a tablespoon of brown sugar so that i can sprinkle it over and it makes it just a little bit sweeter and my oven just finished heating up so i’m going to put this in uh my timer just went off so we are going to pull out the pumpkin bars and see how they look oh yeah i touched the edge a little i’m just gonna stick a knife in them and see if anything sticks looks pretty good so from here i’m going to leave them sitting on the counter until they cool down enough for me to be able to stick them in the fridge and let them cool completely before cutting them so we’ll come back to these in a couple of hours and see how they turned out and while those are cooling down we’re gonna move on to the pumpkin muffins this batter is really similar to a few other recipes that i’ve got on my channel i have another seasonal recipe that is a marbled chocolate pumpkin bread it is one of my favorite desserts i love it for the holidays i make it for family pretty much every year but i’ve also got my banana bread recipe and then my blueberry muffins so the batter is really similar to all of those for these we’re just going to start by making some more oat flour if you’re seeing a trend here i always use oat flour if you’ve been around for a while you know that that is my preferred flour if you haven’t checked out my pantry video it’s just so easy to make at home yourself if you’ve got oats around in your pantry already you can just blend them up for these pumpkin muffins here is everything that you will need for this recipe again you can find this recipe on my blog there is a link below and i’m going to walk you through how to make it here but you can go and find all the details there as well
next we’re just going to grab a mixing bowl and mix together all of our wet ingredients my oven is also already preheated but if you weren’t baking multiple recipes in one day you’d want to go ahead and preheat your oven after we’ve got this all mixed together and even we’ll add our wet ingredients to the same bowl
well i’m going to go ahead and put this into muffin tins and then make my crumble and sprinkle that over top you can do a couple variations with this so you can do a chocolate swirl if you want to learn how to do that go check out that marble chocolate pumpkin bread because it would just be the same you would just separate some of the batter add cocoa powder to that and then layer it and swirl it as you were putting it into the muffin tins you can take this basic batter and turn it into a loaf as well if you didn’t want muffins that would be back to the marble chocolate pumpkin bread just minus the chocolate you could do the streusel topping over the whole loaf and just have a streusel topping pumpkin loaf instead of pumpkin muffins you also could add walnuts or pecans or some other kind of nut to this you could add pumpkin seeds as well or pepitas if you wanted there to be a nice kind of crunch on top or inside of the muffins you could even add a little turmeric to it if you wanted to add the health benefits of turmeric and make it a little more bright in color probably doesn’t need it but i like to kind of press the crumble in just to make sure that it stays on top as they bake because these will rise you don’t want all that crumble falling off these will bake for 24 to 32 minutes until one of the center muffins has a knife or a toothpick come out clean timer just went off i’m gonna pull the muffins out now
pretty clean so i’m gonna just let these cool down and my pumpkin pie bars back here have cooled off enough for me to be able to stick the pan in the fridge so i’m gonna do that too so i’m gonna have lunch and i will come back take these out of the muffin tin cut up my bars and then i’ll go ahead and do a photo shoot and show you a quick behind the scenes for that or at least go ahead and try one of the pumpkin bars here on camera
you can see it holds together really well so like i mentioned this is perfect for taking to an event with you definitely better to have a little handheld pumpkin pie than trying to manage a piece while you’re you know it may be a walk around um event and then the uh the pumpkin muffins are just really tasty they’re a nice good pumpkin holiday recipe i’m going to take photos of both of these and show you a little bit behind the scenes and what that looks like but that is it for today’s recipe i really appreciate you watching thank you so much and see you next time
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