Feeling a little decadent? Or need to create something out-of-the-ordinary for an open house or bake sale? Or just for you? In the Fall, pumpkin reigns king, so why not add a surprise companion with some dark chocolate?
While most pumpkin cookies skew cakey, these bars are as rich and chewy as the center of a chocolate chip cookie. And who doesn’t love those? To counteract the added moisture from the pumpkin purée, this recipe has a few tricks up its sleeve: For starters, it completely ditches the eggs.
Browning the butter does double duty, removing water while also giving the dough a deeper flavor with nutty notes. Baking the bars at a low temperature keeps the edges soft, resulting in an impossibly chewy cookie texture with a warm pumpkin spice flavor and pockets of molten chocolate.
The chocolate pieces take several hours to harden, so you may not want to package them until several hours go by, But in the meantime, go ahead and nosh on a few while they are still warm and gooey.
Pumpkin Dark Chocolate Chip Bars
Ingredients
- ¾ cup unsalted butter (1½ sticks)
- Nonstick cooking spray or neutral oil
- 1¾ cups packed light brown sugar
- ¾ cup canned pumpkin purée (not pumpkin pie filling)
- 2 tsp. vanilla extract
- 2½ cups all-purpose flour
- 2 tsp. ground cinnamon
- 1 tsp. baking powder
- 1 tsp. baking soda
- 1 tsp. kosher salt
- 1 tsp. ground ginger
- ¼ tsp. ground cloves
- ¼ tsp. ground nutmeg
- 10 oz. bag of dark chocolate chips, save about a 1/2 cup for the topping
Directions
- In a small (preferably light-colored) saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat. Continue cooking, stirring constantly to prevent the milk solids from burning, until the butter foams, darkens into a light amber color and becomes fragrant and nutty, about 3 to 4 minutes more. (Watch closely to make sure the butter doesn’t burn.) Immediately pour the butter along with any of the browned milk solids into a large heatproof mixing bowl. Let cool for 20 minutes until warm but no longer hot.
- While the butter cools, heat the oven to 325°F. Grease a 9-by-13-inch metal or glass baking pan with cooking spray or oil and line with a strip of parchment paper that hangs over the two long sides to create a sling.
- Add the brown sugar, pumpkin purée and vanilla extract to the cooled butter and whisk until smooth and glossy. Add the flour, cinnamon, baking powder, baking soda, salt, ginger, cloves and nutmeg and stir with a spatula just until a soft dough forms with no pockets of unincorporated flour. (Try not to overmix.) Add most of the chocolate chips and stir to evenly distribute throughout the dough.
- Transfer the dough to the prepared baking pan and press into an even layer using a spatula. Sprinkle the top with the remaining chocolate chips, pressing them in slightly so they stick.
- Bake until the bars are puffed, the top is lightly browned and a skewer or knife inserted into the center comes out clean with just a few moist crumbs attached or with smudges of melted chocolate, 30 to 45 minutes. (Mine took the full 45 minutes.)
- Let the bars cool in the pan on a wire rack for at least 1 hour. (Even after cooling for over 2 hours, the chocolate pieces were still too soft to package.) Using the parchment paper, lift the bars out of the pan and cut into 24 squares. The cookie bars will keep in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 5 days.
Adapted from a recipe by Jesse Szewczyk for NYTimes Cooking
Accounting for Taste 