Pecan Pie Bars – Will This Replace The Pie? Sweet, Buttery, and So Addictive!

If you love pecan pie but don’t want to mess with making a crust, you’re going to love these Pecan Pie Bars! They’ve got all that sweet, buttery, nutty goodness of a traditional pecan pie — but baked in a simple bar form that’s easy to slice and serve.

In this video, I’ll show you step-by-step how to make them with a buttery shortbread crust and a gooey pecan filling that comes together quickly. These are perfect for Thanksgiving, Christmas, or anytime you want a cozy Southern dessert that feels like home.

I love serving these bars warm with a scoop of vanilla ice cream or just by themselves with a cup of coffee. They’re great for sharing, gifting, or keeping all to yourself (I won’t tell!).

Checkout The Pecan Pantry mentioned in this video:
https://thepecanpantry.com

💛 Printable recipe:

Pecan Pie Bars

🥧 Watch more Southern dessert recipes:

👇 Tell me in the comments — do you prefer pecan pie or pecan pie bars?

🦃 See all Thanksgiving recipes:

Thanksgiving Sign Up

Make sure you subscribe and click the bell so you don’t miss a single recipe.

💛 Thanks for being part of the Mary Katherine’s Table family.

Everybody’s looking for pecan pie at Thanksgiving. We’re going to do a little twist on that. Let’s make some pecan pie bars. Jump on in and make it with me. Okay, I just got to jump back in here and tell y’all. So, I ate another bite or two and then my husband Darren got one and he absolutely loved it. He said, “This is my kind of dessert.” And the thing that I really like about this is that it’s not too sweet. You know, a lot of times I love pecan pie, but I feel like it can be a little bit too sweet. It’s just got so much sugar and corn syrup in that, you know, filling layer. But with these, you get a nice contrast because that bottom cookie layer is not very sweet. Remember, we didn’t put a whole lot of sugar in that. So overall, that makes this dessert where it’s not got as much sweetness, but you still get that nice flavor of a pecan pie. It’s really good. Y’all got to try this. Hi, I’m Mary Catherine and welcome to my table. I have to tell you, this is a totally new recipe for me. I’ve never made it before, but we’re going to make it together today. I totally trust the source, though, where I got this recipe. My sister gave it to me. So, hey Laura, if you’re out there watching, this one’s yours. She is a really good cook, too. And so, she found out that a pecan company, it’s called the Pecan Pantry, sent me some of their products to try. They’re not sponsoring this video or anything, but we’re going to test them out today for the first time in our video. And she said, “If you get those pecans, this is the recipe you need to try.” So, we’re going to make pecan pie bars today. And they sound really delicious. And I’m sure that they are because they’ve got her seal of approval. So, let’s make them. These pecan pie bars are gonna have two layers to them. The bottom is going to be kind of like a cookie crust. And so, that’s what we’re going to make first. I’m going to use my mixer to do this. You do not have to have a mixer, though. If you have just a pastry blender, you can absolutely use this. Just three simple ingredients in this layer. We’re going to use flour, sugar, and butter. Our flour is just plain allpurpose. It’s not self-rising. So, let’s get our flour and our sugar into our bowl. We’re going to use 1 and 34 cups of flour. And I’m just going to kind of lightly get this into my cup. And I’m just going to kind of level it with my finger today. There’s one. And let’s do about three4s. A little bit more. There we go. And now we need half a cup of sugar. So there’s not a whole lot of sugar in this layer, which is great cuz the top layer is going to have more. So this is not going to be too sweet. And I’m going to go ahead and put my paddle on the mixer and just let it kind of mix those a little bit first. Okay, that’s good enough. And then we need to add our butter. This is cold butter. You want to be sure it’s cold and right out of the fridge when you use it. We’re going to use 34 of a cup today. So, that’s going to be 1 and 1/2 sticks of butter. And I’m going to just cut it up into little cubes to make it a little bit easier to get incorporated into our bottom cookie layer here. And I just kind of do a quick cut down the middle, flip it over, cut down the middle again, and then just kind of do like this. And then you see you’re going to end up with kind of small little cubes of butter. And that just makes it a little bit easier for it to mix into that flour sugar mixture. Okay. There’s our first stick. Okay. Now, this one we only need half, remember? Okay. Same thing. Slice it one way, flip it over, slice it the other way. And then just do your little slices all across. And let’s dump it in. And now I’m just going to turn the mixer on and let it kind of blend this butter into the flour and sugar. And you can see it’s kind of starting to break that butter up into smaller pieces. And that’s what we want. We want it to be close to maybe pa size pieces in this mixture. Okay. Now, at this stage, you can see it’s still very coarse, but that’s what the recipe calls for. So, I think we are right. And I may just smush it a little bit more with my hands just to make sure that butter’s good in there. And I think it is. I think we’re good. So now what we’re going to do, we’re going to bake this in a 9 by13 pan. So I’ve got my baking pan here. I have parchment paper, but I am gonna go ahead and spray underneath it just in case any of this mixture from these bars spills, maybe over the corners of the parchment paper. Because at the end after it’s chilled, after this baked and then chilled, we want to be able to just lift the parchment paper out to cut into bars. So, I want to be sure we can do that well. So, I’m going to go ahead and spray the pan a little bit even though we have it with lined with parchment paper. So, now let’s dump this mixture into our pan. Just like that. And then you just kind of press it down evenly around the bottom of your pan. And that butter is going to bake into this flour and sugar and just kind of create that cookie crust that we want. So it’ll hold together well after it’s baked. right now even though it’s um looking loose right now, but just press it down. That looks pretty even. All right, there we go. I already have the oven heated up to 350°, so we’re going to stick it in now and let this layer partially bake before we add the top layer. I’m going to set the timer for 20 minutes. We want to let it bake for 20 minutes. And while it’s baking, we’ll put together the top layer. And while while the cookie base is hot, as soon as we take it out, we go ahead and put the top layer on and then complete the baking process. So, let’s set it for 20 minutes. Let’s go ahead and put our top layer together. While our cookie base is baking, we’re going to start out with 13 of a cup of flour. And then it also calls for one extra tablespoon of flour. So, there’s that. Now, we’re going to add brown sugar to this layer. And we need 2/3 of a cup. And so, I’m going to get that ready. And you know, with your brown sugar, you want to have it packed into your cup. And the way that you know you got it is if it holds its shape when it comes out. You see how that’s packed really nicely and holds the shape of the measuring cup. So, there’s our 2/3 cups of brown sugar. Before we add anything else, I’m going to mix these together well, just to help prevent any lumps in the dry ingredients as we add more things to it. Sometimes that flour or the brown sugar can kind of want to stay a little bit lumpy. So, let’s kind of mix them together. It kind of helps even it out some and take those lumps away. Okay, now let’s add four eggs. Let’s also add some vanilla. We’re going to add about a teaspoon. This is a half teaspoon, so I’m going to do two of them. Let’s add about a half a teaspoon of salt. I’m going to use kosher salt. You can just use regular table salt if you have it. That’s fine. Okay, there’s our salt. And then let’s add some corn syrup. And I know this is not the best ingredient, but you’re not going to eat these every day. Okay, this is the dark corn syrup. You could also use the light corn syrup. Either one would work with this recipe. We’re going to use 1 and 1/2 cups of our corn syrup. Now, let’s go ahead and mix this up. Now, this is where it resembles pecan pie filling very much. It’s a little bit different, but the ingredients are so similar. So, we’re going to get that same flavor from this mixture that we would from pecan pie. And you see how since we got the lumps out of the brown sugar and the flour earlier, we have a really nice smooth mixture. Now, it does tend to separate. We’re going to let it sit here for just a few minutes until our cookie base is ready and we will add our pecans at the last minute. And what I have here today, I’m going to go ahead and open them and taste them. But what the pecan pantry sent me, these are the pecan pieces. So, they are perfect for this dish because they’re already chopped up the right size. I’ll show you some. Okay, let’s taste them. M. Yep. It’s really good quality. I can tell. Yeah. Very nice. But they didn’t just send me the pieces. They also sent me a bag of the halves. So, if you ever wanted to do a pie or have another dish that you want the halves in, you’ve got that. And they also sent me some pecan meal. So if you wanted to do something with some breading, but you have someone that needs some to watch gluten, then uh you could use this pecan meal instead. So I’m excited about trying that. I’ll probably do some chicken cutlets or something similar with this pecan meal and see how that see how that works. But anyway, and there again, they have not sponsored this video. I’m just simply trying their products out today. And um so anyway, I just want to let you know about them. I think they’re a family-based company down in Louisiana and um seem to be very good quality pecans. So, I’m excited about having them in this dish today. It’s been 20 minutes and they look perfect. Let’s get them out. And you see how that has all cooked together to kind of form a big cookie base. I think it’s going to be kind of like a shortbread base down here. And it’s just starting to turn a little bit brown around the edge. And that’s exactly what the recipe said. So that’s perfect. Now, let’s give this another quick mix. See how it kind of separates a little bit? That’s why we didn’t add the pecans yet, because it’s just easier to mix this back together well without the pecan pieces in it. Now we’re going to add two cups of our pecan pieces. Oh, they look pretty. Really nice. And I’m just going to fold them in kind of instead of using the whisk. They’ll get kind of caught in that middle part of the whisk. Okay. And then while our cookie base is hot, we’re just going to go ahead and pour this directly onto it. M. Doesn’t that look good? And now this is going to go back into the oven and we’re going to bake it for an additional 40 to 50 minutes. Okay. I’m going to be careful. Trying to keep it inside that parchment paper if I can three. And we are still using 350°. So 350° for an additional 40 to 50 minutes. We’ll set it at 40. We’ll check it then. I think that looks perfect. They look like they’re set. It could be just a touch jiggly in the middle and it would continue to set as it cools. This is not jiggling much at all. So, looks like it’s ready. 40 minutes was perfect in my oven. Of course, your oven may be slightly different, but these are ready. We’re going to let them cool. And then once they cool enough, we will stick them in the refrigerator and we want to chill them for several hours. Or you could chill them overnight. And then at that point, we’ll take them out using the parchment paper that we lined the pan with. It’ll make it easy to lift them out and we can cut them into small bars. These smell delicious. And I think they turned a perfect golden brown. M. Love it. Our pecan pie bars have cooled to the point that we can go ahead and put the lid on them and put them in the fridge to chill. And again, we’re going to let them chill probably for 3 to four hours, or you can even leave them overnight if you want. We just want them to be good and cold before we cut them. I have a lid for this pan, but if you don’t have a lid, just cover them with foil. It’ll be fine. Our pecan pie bars have been chilling for a little while. So, I’m going to get them out and we’re going to cut them and give them a taste test. We’re going to see if they’re as good as my sister said. That parchment paper really did make it easy to just lift them right out of the pan. So, don’t skip that step. There we go. Now, I think these are going to be fairly rich, so I’m going to cut them in small pieces. And I’m using a serrated knife because I think it’ll cut through the nuts a little bit easier. All right, let’s see. Why? Okay. I’m going to take the little corner piece that’s not as pretty because of the shape. We’re gonna do our taste test now. Mhm. I do like that. You really get that taste of a pecan pie. That flavor is definitely coming through. But I love that cookie crust on the bottom. And it’s very easy to pick up and eat after it’s chilled and set up good. You can see it holds its shape really well. I love it. I like that a lot. Good choice, Laura. Okay. You can just see how it holds its shape so well. That filling has set up since we’ve chilled it, and it just makes a pretty little bar. with all that delicious flavor of a pecan pie. It’s kind of like a combination of a shortbread cookie and a pecan pie together. That that bottom layer kind of has that shortbread cookie flavor and texture. It’s really good together. I like it a lot. Well, thanks so much for joining me today at Mary Catherine’s Table. I think this would make a great addition to any dessert table at your Thanksgiving dinner. Be sure to hit the subscribe button and ring that bell for notifications when we come out with new videos. And remember to go out today and find someone who needs a little bit of kindness and give them some of yours.