Pumpkin Pie Bars

These Pumpkin Pie Bars are a shortbread crust with pumpkin pie custard baked straight on top of it, cut into 12 squares. The crust goes into the pan raw, which every other bar recipe on earth will tell you not to do. It comes out tasting like shortbread anyway.

Pumpkin pie bars are easier than pumpkin pie. No pastry to roll out. No blind baking. No crimped edge to fuss with.

All of that is true. But easier and faster aren’t the same thing, and I’d rather be straight with you about that.

The work takes 20 minutes. You beat 3 things into crumbs, pat them into a pan, whisk 6 more things in a bowl, and pour one over the other. You could do all of it while you’re on the phone.

Then the pan bakes for 1 hour and 10 minutes. Then it cools on the counter for 2 hours. Then it chills in the fridge for 2 more.

So yes, easier. Not faster.

What you get for the wait is 12 squares instead of 8 slices. Nobody has to stand over a pie plate with a server while 9 people watch. The first square looks like the last one. There’s no bad piece, and no piece that lands on the plate as a pile.

The cooling is the part I’d underline, because that’s where these go wrong. Cut them warm and the edges hold but the middle doesn’t. It spreads. It keeps spreading. What you get is pumpkin pudding with shortbread at the bottom, and it tastes just as good as the bars would have, and it isn’t bars.

Make them the day before. That’s the whole trick.

Every bar recipe you’ve ever read tells you to bake the crust first. This one doesn’t, and I’d rather explain that than have you standing in your kitchen wondering whether I left out a step.

The oven starts at 425°F. That’s hot for a custard, and it isn’t for the custard. It’s for the first 15 minutes, when the bottom of the crust sets before the filling gets a chance to soak into it. Then the oven drops to 350°F and the rest of the bake belongs to the pumpkin.

The other thing in your favor is that shortbread isn’t pastry. There’s no water in it. Butter, icing sugar, flour. Nothing on that list knows how to go gummy.

What comes out is somewhere between crisp and soft and it tastes like shortbread. Pat it in evenly and that’s the whole job. The flat bottom of a measuring cup does this better than your hands, and I say that as someone who tried it with my hands for years.

• Butter (¾ cup, salted, softened): Properly softened, meaning you set it on the counter an hour ago. Not 20 seconds in the microwave with one corner going to liquid and the middle still cold.
• Icing sugar (½ cup): Icing, powdered, confectioners, it’s all the same bag with 3 different names. It dissolves into the butter instead of sitting in it, and that’s the difference between shortbread and a sugar cookie.
• All purpose flour (1½ cups): Plain flour. Nothing clever happening here.
• Canned pumpkin (29 ounces, 1 large can): Pumpkin puree, not pumpkin pie filling. Pie filling already has the sugar and the spice in it, so if you grab that one you’ll be adding a cup of brown sugar and 3 teaspoons of spice to something that already came with both. The 2 cans sit next to each other on the shelf and look almost identical, which I assume is on purpose.
• Eggs (4 large): These are what turn a bowl of pumpkin into custard. Four is right for a pan this size and I wouldn’t freelance.
• Brown sugar (1 cup, packed): Packed means press it into the cup until it holds its shape when you tip it out. Loosely spooned brown sugar is about ⅔ of a cup wearing a disguise.
• Pumpkin pie spice (3 teaspoons): Three full teaspoons. It looks like a lot on the spoon and it isn’t, because what you’re spicing is 8 cups of custard. If you want to make your own, mine is cheaper than the jar and you’ll start putting it in your coffee.
• Salt (1 teaspoon): In a dessert, yes, a full teaspoon. Leave it out and the filling tastes sweet and then nothing, like a slice of pie you’re being polite about.
• Evaporated milk (24 ounces, two 12 ounce cans): Not sweetened condensed milk. They come in nearly identical cans and they are not interchangeable. One of them is milk. The other is mostly sugar.
• Whipped cream (for serving): On top, at the end, once they’re cold. Put it on before they go in the fridge and it’ll be flat and weepy by morning.

Heat the oven and line the pan: Set the oven to 425°F. Line a 9 by 13 inch baking dish with parchment paper and let it hang well over 2 of the long sides. That overhang is how the whole slab comes out of the pan later, so leave it long. Trimming it flush is a decision you’ll regret in about 5 hours.

Make the shortbread crust: Beat the ¾ cup of softened butter in a mixer until it’s smooth. Add the ½ cup of icing sugar and mix well. Add the 1½ cups of flour and mix on low until it looks crumbly. It will not come together into a ball of dough. It isn’t supposed to and nothing has gone wrong.

Pat it into the pan: Tip the crumbs into the lined pan and press them into an even layer across the bottom. Flat bottom of a measuring cup. No pre baking, no docking, no pie weights, none of it.

Mix the filling: In a large bowl, whisk together the 29 ounces of pumpkin, the 4 eggs, the 1 teaspoon of salt, the 3 teaspoons of pumpkin pie spice and the 1 cup of packed brown sugar. Pour in the 24 ounces of evaporated milk and whisk until it’s completely smooth. It’ll be thin. That’s custard.

Pour it over and bake: Pour the filling over the crust. Bake at 425°F for 15 minutes, then turn the oven down to 350°F and bake for another 50 to 55 minutes. It’s done when the edges are set and the center still wobbles a little when you nudge the pan. A center that looks finished in the oven is a center that’s overbaked.

Cool it on the counter: Leave the pan alone for about 2 hours, until it’s completely cool. The filling is still setting this entire time. The oven did most of the work but it didn’t do all of it.

Then chill it: Into the fridge for at least 2 more hours.

Cut and serve: Lift the whole slab out by the parchment overhang and set it on a cutting board. Cut into 12 squares, wiping the knife between cuts, and top each one with whipped cream.

Four hours. Two on the counter and 2 in the fridge.

Pumpkin custard isn’t finished when the timer goes off. It comes out of the oven with a wobble in the middle, which is the way it should be, and it keeps setting the whole time it’s cooling. The oven got it most of the way. The counter and the fridge finish it, slowly, and there’s no version of this where you talk them into going faster.

Four hours is also exactly long enough for a person to work out that 3 hours is probably fine.

The good news is the cold ones are better, so the waiting isn’t a tax. The shortbread firms up, the spice settles into the pumpkin, and the squares cut with edges you could take a picture of. Make them the day before and none of the above is your problem.

• The parchment overhang. Leave it long on 2 of the long sides. With it, the slab lifts out whole and you cut on a board. Without it, you’re reaching into a corner with a spatula, at an angle, and the first square is going to be a casualty.
• Room temperature butter. Cold butter doesn’t beat smooth, it just breaks into smaller cold pieces, and you find them later as little pale spots in the crust.
• An even crust. Thick spots stay doughy and thin spots go dark, and you won’t know about either one until there’s 8 cups of custard sitting on top.
• Check the can before you open it. Puree, not pie filling. This is the only mistake on this page that can’t be walked back once it’s in the bowl.
• Pull them with a wobble. The middle should still move when you nudge the pan. Waiting for it to look set gets you a cracked, dry top.
• Wipe the knife. Twelve clean squares or 12 smeared ones, and the difference is about 30 seconds of your life.

• Graham cracker crust: If graham is more your thing, use 2 cups of graham crumbs, ½ cup of melted butter and ¼ cup of sugar, pressed in the same way. Faster, sweeter, and it gives you somewhere to put the end of the box.
• No crust at all: Butter the pan and bake the filling on its own. It sets into a pumpkin custard, it’s naturally gluten free, and you’ve just removed 3 ingredients and a mixer from your evening.
• Cream cheese swirl: Beat 8 ounces of softened cream cheese with ¼ cup of sugar and 1 egg, dollop it over the pumpkin filling, and drag a knife through it a few times. Two drags looks deliberate. Nine drags looks like beige.
• Streusel top: Flour, brown sugar, butter and oats rubbed together between your fingers and scattered over the filling for the last 25 minutes.
• Toasted pecans: Pressed into the crust before the filling goes on, or scattered over the whipped cream at the end. Both, if it’s a holiday.
• Caramel: Warm caramel sauce over each square right before it goes to the table.

Covered in the fridge, up to 3 days. They have to be refrigerated because they’re custard, and they’re better cold than at room temperature anyway, so this works out.

Keep the whipped cream in its own container and add it when you serve.

They freeze for up to 3 months and they do it well. Cut them into squares first, freeze them on a tray until they’re firm, then stack them in a container with parchment between the layers. Doing it that way means you can take out 2 squares on a Tuesday instead of committing to a whole pan, which I consider the entire point of freezing dessert. Thaw in the fridge overnight, and no whipped cream until after.