Like a pumpkin bar with cream cheese frosting, only better. Seriously.

I craved a pumpkin bar with cream cheese frosting. It hit me like a ton of bricks and, ironically, this craving struck me right after a 5 mile run.

So I didn’t feel quite as guilty adding 2 sticks of butter to the mixing bowl.

I run for… butter.

Pumpkin bars with cream cheese frosting, while ultimately delectable, seem a little overdone. Jumping around the kitchen on my runner’s high, I chose a different destiny for my post-run treat.

Enter the high and mighty CHEESECAKE SWIRL.

PS: Leave out the cream cheese swirl and frost the plain pumpkin bars with this cream cheese frosting and there ya go. We both win!

Let me chat for a min about these pumpkin bars.

I adapted a recipe from my girl Martha. I questioned the amount of butter, but I was quickly proven wrong when I (1) looked at how many bars this recipe yields* and (2) noticed how soft, tender, moist, and…uhh… buttery these pumpkin bars taste. The butter is KEY in the flavor and texture, so no skimping.

*24 bars! Make sure you have hungry friends to help gobble them up.

Martha uses granulated sugar, but I opt for brown sugar in the pumpkin bars. You know me. You know how I do. Brown sugar all the time, especially when Fall spices are involved. Why not use it to sweeten the pumpkin bars? I also reduced the sugar because I was feeling healthy. Wink wink. Muhahaha.

Obviously we’ll use pumpkin puree in the bars– along with fall spices and lovely ground cinnamon. The spice flavor is off the hook in these pumpkin bars and I promise to never use the term off the hook again.

Martha uses chocolate chips and while I’m always a huge supporter of chocolate’s addition, I was really going for the whole pumpkin + cream cheese combination. So I left the chocolate chips out. And I don’t think you’ll miss them especially when cheesecake swirls are involved.

Speaking of. Remember when I swirled cheesecake into red velvet bars? No? It’s ok, that was 2 and a half years ago. But you should really, really try those if you haven’t already. I took that same exact cheesecake filling and added it to these pumpkin bars. Though I did keep the egg white; the slightly extra volume produced a little more cream cheese swirl. (I did that because this is a larger pan of bars.)

For a little something extra, and because I like to decorate all my foods, I topped the batter with pepitas + cinnamon. The pepitas (pumpkin seeds) got a little toasty and added a little crunch on top. Total texture freak right here and you’re REALLY going to love their addition too.

The pumpkin bars are soft like cake, dense like a blondie, and flavored like Fall. I can’t stop flipping out over these! They’re like a pumpkin cupcake with cream cheese frosting and a cheesecake-filled pumpkin muffin all in one.

I kinda think Martha would be proud.

Follow me on Instagram and tag #sallysbakingaddiction so I can see all the SBA recipes you make. ♥