Most people buy a jar of Pumpkin Pie Spiceto bake one pie in November, use about two teaspoons of it, and leave the rest in the cabinet to become stale until the following fall. Which is a shame, because pumpkin spice is actually one of the few blends that can genuinely carry a whole season if you let it.
Pumpkin Pie Spice is not actually sweet by itself. It’s completely sugar-free, and there’s no pumpkin in it either. It only reads as dessert because baked goods and treats is where we have always used it… which is why a spoonful of it in a pot of chili tends to catch people a little off guard.
We will get to the chili. But first, the four pumpkin recipes almost everyone rushes to make before anything else.
What do people typically make with pumpkin spice?
These four popular pumpkin recipes account for most of what gets made with a jar of this, and for good reason. And if you have never cooked with Pumpkin Pie Spice beyond a pie, any one of these is a fine place to start.
Old-Fashioned Homemade Pumpkin Pie
Old-Fashioned Pumpkin Pie is the reason the blend has its name. Ours calls for a full tablespoon in the filling, more than most recipes ask for, and that is exactly why it tastes the way you remember. Scratch crust, evaporated milk, and a two-stage bake that starts at 400 and drops to 350.
Pumpkin Spiced Lattes
Our recipe for a classic Pumpkin Spice Latte begins by cooking both pumpkin puree and pumpkin spicestogether for a minute or two until fragrant, and that single step is what separates a good latte from a dusty one. Milk goes in next, along with your choice of maple or vanilla bean sugar and an extract, then a quick blitz with an immersion blender to froth it. Coffee goes in last. Two servings.
Coffee Shop-Style Pumpkin Spice Sauce
If you want to drink pumpkin-flavored coffee more than occasionally, just make the sauce instead. This recipe for a Coffee Shop Pumpkin Spice Sauce takes ten minutes and yields three cups that keep in the refrigerator for 4-6 weeks. One or two spoonfuls goes into a latte, drip coffee, a French press, or black tea, so you are not building a drink from scratch every morning. It is also excellent over ice cream, which the name does not tell you.
Pumpkin Spiced Bread
Pumpkin Spice Bread has one technique worth stealing: the puree gets cooked down with the spice on the stovetop first, reducing a fifteen-ounce can to a cup and a half. That concentrates the pumpkin and blooms the spice before anything else happens. A brown sugar walnut crumb goes on top, and the recipe makes two loaves. Plan on that, because one of them disappears the day you bake it.
One product note across all four: Vanilla Bean Sugar is the sweetener we reach for whenever pumpkin spice is involved. Real vanilla bean does something for warm spice that plain sugar never manages. If you’re looking for something chocolatey to go with your pumpkin, reach for Black Onyx Chocolate Sugar instead.
Cooking with Pumpkin Spice Tip: Three of those four recipes cook the pumpkin and spice together before anything else goes in. That is not a coincidence. Warming ground spices in a little moisture or fat (also known as blooming) wakes up their aromatic oils, and it is the biggest single difference between a pumpkin recipe that tastes flat and one that tastes like fall. Sixty seconds of stirring is all it takes.
What are the best pumpkin spice desserts to try?
Desserts are the biggest category here by a long way, and here are some to try once the classics are behind you.
Bigger Pumpkin Bakes
Our recipe for Pumpkin Cheesecake Bars split the filling in two, leaving half plain and folding pumpkin and spice into the rest, then swirling them over a graham crust. You get pumpkin pie and cheesecake in the same bite, and the pan yields twenty to twenty-four bars. That makes this a party recipe rather than a weeknight one.
Our recipe forPumpkin Bundt Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting uses a tablespoon of pumpkin spice plus extra added Saigon Cinnamon, then Grey Sea Salt to keep it from going flat, and finally a frosting thin enough to pour rather than spread. It makes 12 servings, and it looks like more work than it is.
Bourbon Barrel Salted Pumpkin Sheet Cakeis probably our most ambitious dessert recipe here and worth it once a season. Cookie butter in the cake, a torched spiced meringue on top, then fresh figs, pomegranate arils, and a scatter of smoked sea salt. It makes 15 total servings, and is a show-stopping centerpiece for the table.
Supreme Saigon Cinnamon is the boldest cinnamon we carry, and a little added alongside our Pumpkin Pie Spicepushes any baked good or dessert noticeably warmer. Whiskey Barrel Smoked Sea Salt is what finishes that sheet cake, and salted pumpkin is a pairing more people should try.
Pumpkin Cookies
Trick or Treat Pumpkin Oatmeal Cookies are the ones to bake the last week of October, when you want something to hand out that is not candy. The oatmeal keeps them chewy instead of cakey, which is the usual failure mode with a pumpkin cookie, and they hold up in a tin for several days.
Pumpkin Cupcakes
Pumpkin Cream Soda Cupcakes put cream soda in the batter. It sounds like a gimmick and it is not: the carbonation lightens the crumb and the vanilla in the soda plays directly into the pumpkin spice. If pumpkin cupcakes have struck you as heavy before, this is the fix.
Though not a cookie or cupcake (but something magically in between), these Pumpkin-Cinnamon Whoopie Piesare the perfect Halloween party pick, mostly because they travel better than anything needing a plate and a fork. Soft pumpkin cake, cinnamon cream in the middle, and they clear a table faster than a sliced cake ever will.
Frozen or Cold Pumpkin Desserts
This recipe for Pumpkin Pie Ice Cream is worth making in early fall while it is still warm enough to want it. It also happens to be the best use for leftover pumpkin puree, and a scoop of it next to a slice of actual pie come November is not a bad idea either.
Even More Pies, Loaves, Tarts, and Pumpkin Treats
Spiced Pumpkin Tart with Orange-Graham Crust is for when you want pie but not the same pie you had last year. The citrus in the crust is the reason it works, since orange against warm spice cuts the richness in a way a plain graham crust never does.
Grandma Menard’s Pumpkin Chiffon Piegoes the opposite direction. Chiffon means the filling is lightened rather than baked into a dense custard, so it eats closer to a mousse than a standard pie. If your holiday table always ends with everyone too full for dessert, bring this one. For more on this recipe, check out The Story Behind Grandma Menard’s Pumpkin Chiffon Pie.
Butterscotch Extract turns out to be one of pumpkin’s best supporting flavors, and we lean on it twice. Our recipe for Butterscotch Pumpkin Bread folds it into a standard loaf, where the caramel notes give the bread a depth plain pumpkin bread does not reach.
Pumpkin Butterscotch Fudge takes that same butterscotch and pumpkin pairing somewhere considerably richer. This is candy rather than baking, it keeps well, and of everything on this page it is the one most worth boxing up and handing to someone.
What are the best pumpkin spice snacks?
None of these take real effort, so they are grouped by what you actually need them for.
Ten minutes, no oven: Make Pumpkin Pie Dip.
Cream cheese, confectioners’ sugar, canned pumpkin, sour cream, a tablespoon of pumpkin pie spice, and extra Saigon cinnamon, beaten smooth. Eight servings, and it goes with apple slices, graham crackers, or pretzels.
Feeding a crowd: Make Pumpkin Pie Spice Caramel Cornor our Pumpkin Pie Party Mix. Both scale up easily and keep well enough to bag up as gifts, so make more than you think you need.
Cooking with kids: Make Pumpkin Spice Crispy Rice Treats, it’s probably the easiest pumpkin dessert recipe on this page and the one they will actually help with.
Something to take on-the-go: Make Pumpkin Seed and Black Bean Granola. Black beans in granola might sound strange, but it adds real protein. That is what makes this the one to pack for a hike or a lunchbox rather than set out in a bowl.
Can you use pumpkin spice in savory cooking?
This is the section most people skip and the one that changes how you think about the jar. Pumpkin Pie Spice is not a sweet blend. It only tastes sweet because we almost exclusively put it in sweet things.
Against chile heat, broth, or a roasting pan it behaves completely differently, and if you want the full breakdown of what is actually in the jar, that is over in Behind the Seasoning: Pumpkin Pie Spice.
Our recipe for Pumpkin Pie Spice Chili is the one to try first, and the logic is the same as cinnamon in a mole or a Cincinnati chili: warm baking spice against chile and tomato adds depth you cannot get any other way. It sounds wrong on paper and tastes right in the bowl.
Then make Pumpkin Turkey Chiliback to back with it. This one uses pumpkin puree with no pumpkin pie spice at all, leaning on Hatch green chile, guajillo, and New Mexican chile powders instead. Tasting them side by side shows you how much of what you think of as pumpkin flavor is actually the spice rather than the squash.
Pumpkin Spice Roasted Squash is the easiest proof of concept here and takes about five minutes of work. Cube the squash, toss with oil and pumpkin spice, roast. That is the whole idea, and it makes the argument better than any explanation.
And for a full dinner, Slow Cooker Spiced Pumpkin Soup handles itself while you do something else, which is most of its appeal on a weeknight. The long, low cooking also suits the spice, since it has hours to bloom into the broth rather than minutes.
ButPumpkin Fettuccine Alfredois the one that convinces skeptics. A can of pumpkin gives the sauce more body than cream alone ever does, and the spice reads as warmth behind the parmesan rather than as anything sweet. Nobody at the table will call it a fall novelty dish, which is exactly the point.
Pumpkin Tip for Savory Cooking: Start smaller than you would in a dessert. Half a teaspoon to a teaspoon of pumpkin spices is plenty for a whole pot of chili or soup, and it should register as warmth and depth rather than as a recognizable pumpkin spice flavor. If someone at the table can name the spice, you used too much.
What else can you make with pumpkin spice?
Most of what this jar does never involves a recipe at all. These are the everyday ones, with amounts to start from.
- Oatmeal or overnight oats. A pinch to ¼ tsp. per bowl, stirred in while it is hot so it blooms.
- Pancake, waffle, or muffin batter. 1 to 2 tsp. per batch, whisked into the dry ingredients.
- Whipped cream. ¼ tsp. per cup of cream, added with the sugar. This is the fastest way to make any store-bought pie taste homemade.
- Coffee grounds. ¼ tsp. per cup, whisked into the dry grounds before brewing. Do not sprinkle it into a finished cup, where it just floats.
- Yogurt or cottage cheese. A pinch with a drizzle of honey and some fruit.
- French toast custard. ½ to 1 tsp. per batch of egg mixture.
- Roasted nuts. Toss pecans or almonds with melted butter, a little sugar, and 1 tsp. per two cups, then roast until fragrant.
- Applesauce or apple butter. ½ tsp. per cup transforms the jarred stuff.
- Sweet potatoes and carrots. ½ to 1 tsp. per pound, tossed with oil before roasting.
- Compound butter. ½ tsp. per stick of softened butter with a spoonful of maple syrup, for cornbread, toast, or sweet potatoes.
- Cocktails. Rim a glass with pumpkin spice and sugar, or add a pinch to an old fashioned or a hot toddy.
Pumpkin Spice Storage Tip: Ground blends hold their best flavor for about one to two years in a sealed jar away from heat, light, and moisture, which makes the cabinet above the stove the worst spot in the kitchen. The test is your nose: if the aroma is faint rather than immediate, the flavor will be too, and scooping extra does not fully make up for it.
Get more than just the one pumpkin pie out of your jar.
Pumpkin Pie Spice earns its shelf space in November no matter what. The point of everything above is that it earns it in August, September, October, December, January, and February too.
So start with the latte and the pie, because those are the ones you already want. Then work outward: the sauce so you stop waiting in line and paying too much for iced coffee, the cheesecake bars for any party, the dip because it takes 10 minutes, and the roasted squash because it will change your mind about what this blend is for.
And if you cook your way down this list, one small jar will not get you to Thanksgiving. That is a good problem.
Just grab the refill bag or the large bag and keep going, because a jar that runs out is a jar that got used.
