Summary:
These low carb dessert bars represent the best of both worlds — part pumpkin pie and part cheesecake, so you can get both flavors in a single bite. The bars are layered with an almond flour crust, a middle cheesecake layer, and a top pumpkin layer.
INGREDIENTS
Crust:
- 2 cups
almond flour (Note 1) - 6 tablespoons salted butter, melted
- 2 tablespoons
powdered erythritol sweetener (Note 2)
Filling:
- 4 (8-ounce) bricks cream cheese, room temperature (Note 3)
- 1.5 cups
powdered erythritol sweetener (Note 2) - 4 large eggs, room temperature
- 8 ounces
canned pumpkin - 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
- 1/8 teaspoon
ground cloves
INSTRUCTIONS
- Prepare: Line bottom and sides of
9×13 inch baking dish with parchment paper . Preheat oven to 300 F. - Make Crust: Stir melted butter and sweetener in mixing bowl until combined, then stir in almond flour until butter is absorbed, forming dough. Transfer dough to lined baking dish, and firmly press down using hands or measuring cup to form flat, smooth crust covering entire bottom of dish.
- Bake Crust: Bake crust for 15 minutes at 300 F. Remove crust from oven and rest for 10 minutes while filling is prepared in next step.
- Make Cheesecake Layer: Preheat oven to 350 F. Beat cream cheese and sweetener in large bowl with electric
hand mixer on low speed until well-mixed. Add eggs one at a time, beating on low speed until just combined. Transfer about half of mixture over crust, spreading evenly — this becomes cheesecake layer. - Make Pumpkin Layer: Beat remaining mixture with pumpkin, cinnamon, ginger, and cloves until combined. Carefully scoop small amount of pumpkin mixture over cheesecake layer. Repeat to evenly distribute pumpkin mixture over cheesecake layer. Use rubber spatula to spread out and smooth pumpkin layer.
- Bake Cheesecake: Bake at 350 F until cheesecake is set, about 50 minutes. Ovens vary, so frequently monitor cheesecake and remove when done (Note 4).
NUTRITION
| Makes 24 Servings |
| Amount Per Serving (1 bar): |
| Calories 230 (84% from fat) | |
| Total Fat 22g | 34% |
| Saturated Fat 10g | 52% |
| Cholesterol 78mg | 26% |
| Sodium 180mg | 8% |
| Net Carb 3g | |
| Total Carb 4.5g (Note 7) | 2% |
| Dietary Fiber 1.5g | 7% |
| Sugars 1g | |
| Protein 6g |
PHOTOS
Hi Julia! I am so incredibly happy to have found your website! Lots of people probably won’t agree but I love how you write (without all the fancy blogger fluff) and get straight to the facts. I can’t wait to try this and all your other recipes.
Thanks Amy! Comments like yours mean a lot to me. I’ve never been good at talking about other things so I try to keep the writing concise and on-topic 🙂
Agree! Love how you get right into it and your page isn’t overrun with pop-up ads like some other pages. (Going to try this recipe today — hopefully I can find erythritol at the store…I’m new to keto baking and have somehow made it 3 months without any desserts!)
Thanks Julie. I haven’t had much luck finding erythritol at brick-and-mortar stores, so I usually get it on Amazon. You might find Swerve at some stores, which is an erythritol blend, but it doesn’t measure the same as pure erythritol which is what I used here. By the way, I think it’s fantastic that you’ve made it this long without desserts on keto. Nice job 🙂
I also made this 3 times in the past month. I made it twice during Thanksgiving for 2 different groups. Everyone loved it! Then I made it again for my husband to take to a potluck at work so he would have a Keto option for dessert. He had several coworkers (some who were not keepers) request the recipe. I just made it a fourth time but this time I added finely chopped pecans to the crust and I omitted the pumpkin and added vanilla to the cheesecake. It was incredibly delicious! We drizzled sugar free caramel sauce over it! Yum!!
How much vanilla did you add to the mixture?
This recipe was fabulous. I din’t tell people it was Keto and no one knew. My husband is very very fussy and he loved it too. I will always trust the recipes from this website now! Thanks!
This recipe has made my husband agree to go keto after the holidays. Thanks so much for that. I have a couple comments. The amount of crust I ended up with wasn’t enough to cover a 9”x13” pan. I remade it today using a 10” round springform and that appears to have worked better. Next, my first attempt had an overcooked crust verging on burnt. So today I lowered the bake temp to 280 degrees. It’s still too hot to cut into but I hope this change along with baking at 345 degrees for 60 minutes solved the issue. Finally, the spices were very weak to our tastebuds—my spices are probably old but I used a whole TBL of Vietnamese cinnamon and doubled the cloves as well as added vanilla..also using a scant two cups of swerve.
I like this recipe. Easy to make and so attractive on a plate. Next time I make it I’ll add vanilla extract in the “cheesecake” portion and more like-spices, including nutmeg, to the “pumpkin”portion. I used Almond Meal instead of the blanched almond flour which gave more texture. Thanks so much for this yummy recipe!
I made this recipe for a baking contest at work a couple of days ago and won first place!!! I also added about 1/8 tbsp of nutmeg and added some cinnamon to the crust. Everyone loved that it was keto-friendly and I topped it off some whipped cream and ground cinnamon. Soooo good!!
Not too shabby … which is code for awesome for those of us on keto and would be good for those with a big sugary palette. I’m on keto, loved it! It was perfectly sweet. While I loved it, friends who are used to daily doses of refined sugar said texture was spot on, flavorful, but a preference to make it a lil sweeter. So IF you’re serving to sugary peeps, maybe add more swerve? or maybe make a glaze topping? or perhaps a maple syrup?
Thank you to all of the commenters and creator, all really helped.
p.s. I used an oval 9×11 baking dish (it was all I had), it was fine (kept the odd shaped ends for myself, and severed the rest as squares), I simply held back 1 cup of the base cream cheese filling and made a separate mini cheesecake 🙂
Took this to a covered dish dinner tonight and it was a hit! Even folks not doing Keto or Low Carb were going back for seconds and taking pieces home for later. It was my first cheesecake of any kind and the directions couldn’t have been better. The cheesecake was perfect in texture and just sweet enough. It’s also my first Keto Thanksgiving and as I searched for recipes days earlier I scanned the instructions but apparently didn’t read them completely. So when I got to the part about “refrigerate overnight“ the day I needed to serve it I almost panicked. But a quick Bing search suggested an hour or two in the freezer and it worked perfectly. Even an instruction-impaired cheesecake novice couldn’t derail a perfect outcome!
If I half this recipe & put it in a 8×8 pan .. does it cook the same time?
It will take less time to cook. I would start checking it after 35 minutes of baking, and use the 2 tests described in Note 4 of the recipe to determine if the cheesecake is done. If you give it a try, please let me know how it turns out for you.
These cheesecake bars are really REALLY good! I’m not a big fan of pumpkin so I was looking for something not overloaded with pumpkin flavor for Thanksgiving. These are amazing! The flavor is so good and not overwhelming. Not only did I like them for not being too strong on pumpkin flavor but all the people who do love pumpkin loved them as well! It is so smooth and creamy and it was easy to put together too. Thank you so much for this recipe = )
This is sooooooooooo good! I made it for Thanksgiving dinner yesterday and everyone has raved about it. I’ve been asked (or told) at least a 1/2 a dozen times to make this again before we had eaten the first one in its entirety. Everyone loved the crust and even said they weren’t mad it wasn’t graham crackers. I’ll be making another batch today 😀
Loved the recipe. Easy to follow instructions. Used liquid stevia and added a bit more sweetener. Crust was divine and had a great texture and color! Everyone loved this dessert! Thank you for posting! Happy Thanksgiving!
I made these the other day and they are very good. It is hard to find good keto recipes that tastes like what they claim to taste like and this recipe nails it. I can’t wait to make this again.
Thanks Chelsea, glad you liked the recipe 🙂
I have been on keto for close to two years and I am constantly looking for delicious recipes that others will love, too. This recipe fits the bill. I substituted monk fruit sweetener. I didn’t put it through the food processor, but I beat the cream cheese/egg mixture until it was dissolved. Using the monk fruit sweetener gave it a bit of a citrus taste, but it was still delicious. I like the spices to be a bit more pronounced, so next time I think I might double the spices. This was also so easy to make! I will definitely make this again!
What happens if you mix the cream cheese and pumpkin topping mixtures together because you’re making too many things in the kitchen at once 🫣 We’re about to find out!!
1) the pumpkin needs to be a 15 oz can. NOT 8oz. If using pumpkin pie spices you need a full TBS . And you will need to add more sweetener.
2) do NOT! Use a handheld mixer to combine 4 8-0z bars of cream cheese!! You will burn up the motor!!! Use a standing mixer, ie Kitchen Aid!! You need the heavier motor.
Otherwise the recipe is good.
Also I used powdered Monkfruit/erythritol. Excellent and no bitter kickback
I make this every Thanksgiving! Always a crowd pleaser for keto and non keto guests as well! I add a little cinnamon to the crust and it really adds to the holiday taste!
Can this be made in a springform pan? If so, what size?
Looks good! I wonder if I can use persimmon pulp in place of pumpkin?
I made this recipe and it was so good I am making it a second time in less than a week. Everyone who tried it could not believe it was low carb and sugar free. Thank you for sharing this recipe. I am a diabetes educator and can not wait to share it with my support group.
These look great! Will the recipe still work if I only do half of it?
Yes, that should work. Halve all of the ingredients proportionally, use an 8×8-inch pan, and expect to bake for a shorter duration.
Question, if I wanted to make half the portion and use an 8×8 pan, would you recommend changing the bake time?
Yes, I would reduce the baking time to 10 min for the crust and 40 min for the cheesecake. See Note #4 above on how to determine when the cheesecake is done; it’s more reliable than strictly relying on the baking time estimate alone.
Came out perfectly!! Thank you!!!!
Can this be made without the crust? Looking for something without the crust, just not a huge almond flour fan….but LOVE pumpkin!!
Yes, I think that would be fine. After baking and cooling at room temperature, make sure to let it fully chill in the refrigerator overnight so that it hardens, allowing you to easily cut into bars and handle it without the support of a crust.
Another possibility is using a mixture of almond flour and finely ground pecans for the crust so that you can’t taste the almond flour. You can take pecans and finely grind them using a blender.
Hope that helps! If you give this a try, please let me know how it goes for you.
Too much of an aftertaste and not much pumpkin taste.