French Silk Pie Bars
French Silk Pie Bars have all the velvety chocolate flavor of a French Silk Pie, in the portable format of a dessert bar!
By the way, I hope you all had a great Labor Day weekend. In case you missed my big announcement, be sure to check it out on Instagram.
My little brother came to visit for the weekend. Of course, when I say little, don’t kid yourself. This guy towers over all of us at 6’4″. His favorite dessert is French Silk Pie. We really enjoyed this recipe I made before when he visited us in Boston a few years ago, but this time, I wanted to make something different.
And, let’s be honest, I didn’t want to make a pie. Pies are not my favorite thing to make. I know fall is coming right around the corner, which makes me think of pies, but I’m just not in to them. So bars it was.
As you can see in the pictures, the crust to filling ratio is pretty high on these bars. When I make these again, I’ll reduce the crust recipe to 3/4 of the original. I have reflected the recipe below to reflect that change. The chocolate mousse filling in this recipe is amazing. I’m tempted to just make that part of the recipe again to eat it with a spoon.
Since the crust and filling were both really tall, I didn’t think my pan could handle the whipped cream topping, so I cut the bars and piped it on top. And piping the topping made it look all fancy and fun. I threw the sprinkles on top since I’m lazy and wasn’t in the mood to make chocolate curls… Next time you need a chocolatey travel-friendly dessert to impress your friends, remember these French Silk Bars.
French Silk Pie Bars
French Silk Pie Bars have all the velvety chocolate flavor of a French Silk Pie, in the portable format of a dessert bar!
Yield: 16 bars
Ingredients:
For the Crust:
12 Tbsp (1.5 sticks) butter
1 1/2 cups flour
1/3 cup powdered sugar
For the Filling:
8 ounces bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
1 cup heavy cream
3 eggs
3/4 cup sugar
2 Tbsp water
1 Tbsp vanilla
8 Tbsp (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature, cut into small pieces
For the Topping:
1/2 tsp gelatin
2 Tbsp cold water
1 cup heavy cream
4-5 Tbsp powdered sugar
Directions:
For the Crust:
Preheat oven to 350 degF. Line an 8"x8" pan with parchment paper.
Pulse crust ingredients in food processor 8-10 times until combined. Press crust in to bottom of pan.
Bake for 20-22 minutes or until lightly browned. Set aside to cool.
For the Filling:
Melt chocolate in a double boiler or in the microwave (use 30 second intervals at medium power). Set aside.
Beat the heavy cream to stiff peaks. Place in small bowl and chill in the fridge.
In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat together eggs, sugar, and water until pale yellow and slightly thickened (~6 minutes). Set bowl over saucepan of simmering water and heat mixture to 160 degF, whisking occasionally.
Put bowl on to mixer and beat on medium speed until cooled to room temperature and thickened, about 8 minutes. While beating, add in the chocolate and vanilla. Beat in butter, one piece at a time. Remove bowl from mixer and fold in whipped cream.
Pour mixture over cooled crust and smooth top. Cover and chill for at least 3 hours.
For the Topping:
In a small bowl, sprinkle gelatin over water to soften for 2 minutes. Head 15 seconds in the microwave and whisk to dissolve gelatin. Whip the cream to stiff peaks, adding the gelatin and powdered sugar while whipping.
Spread or pipe on top of bars and chill until set. Decorate with chocolate sprinkles or curls.
Recipe adapted from Willow Bird Baking
I am Jen the Beantown Baker. Engineer by day and baking maven by night. Hubby serves as my #1 fan and official taste tester. We got hitched back in 2006. Barefoot. In the sand. With the waves crashing behind us. It was one of the best decisions we’ve ever made. 
These look fantastic and are so festive!
Oh my, these look divine! I recently made something similar, but with no chocolate – just a pumpkin batter with cream cheese topping. But I definitely think I must try these too.
These are absolutely beautiful!
Look wonderful!
These look awesome. I just wish it made a bigger pan!
They’re pretty rich, but I would imagine you could just double it and make it in a 9×13 pan if you wanted!
I made pumpkin spice brownies on Friday and they were delish so I bet these are EVEN BETTER! Thanks for sharing and I’ll be following your tweaks!
~ingrid
i always make a pumpkin cheesecake in the fall with a ginger cookie crumb crust, but i’m liking the chocolate component in your recipe even more.
oh yum – love pumpkin, and the chocolate/pumpkin combo looks wonderful!
These look great! Is there a way I can make them non-dairy? Something I can sub the cream cheese for? Thanks!
Heather – I’ve had great luck subbing Tofutti Better than Cream Cheese in cheesecake recipes in the past. I think that would definitely work and you could use Earth Balance in the brownie portion. Let me know how it turns out if you try it.
Hi Jenn! I just wanted to let you know that you won the giveaway on my blog last week. I emailed you, but never got a response. Could you email me your mailing address to jennharton@paducah.com. I have to pass it along to myblogspark so they can send you your prize package!
Thanks, Jen…I’ll let you know how they come out!
OH wow these do look delicious! I love all that swirled pumpkin…yum!
Those look amazing!
Wow, I love these! My husband would die of happiness of I made these for him – pumpkin cheesecake is his favorite thing for fall.
They look like tiger fur – very cool! What an interesting flavour combination.
We love these at my house! I like your idea of dark chocolate – I will have to try that next time.
beautiful! And they look so delicious!! I agree I don’t normally think of pumpkin with chocolate… but you have me convinced!
The tops of these are a work of art! Love it!
Three of my favorite thi ngs in one dessert! Chocolate and pumpkin and cheesecake! How perfect…
~Nancy
Three of my favorite thi ngs in one dessert! Chocolate and pumpkin and cheesecake! How perfect…
~Nancy
hi.. just dropping by here… have a nice day! http://kantahanan.blogspot.com/
The side-view shot totally won me over. These look delicious!
This looks so yummy.
I now know what to make for the office potluck!
Those look amazing. I love pumpkin with chocolate, I plan on making these soon.
Your brownies look delicious! I am curious since I would like mine to taste more like pumpkin pie than plain pumpkin should i add pumpkin pie spices or follow your recipe for the spices?
Thanks!
fawkes – There are a decent amount of spices in the pumpkin portion of the batter. I would recommend making is as the recipe states, then taste it before you pour it into the pan. Maybe then add some pumpkin pie spice if you’d like.
I made these over the weekend and they were scrumptious!! I’m not a huge fan of pumpkin but this recipe is now a fall staple. I plan on making them for the family on Thanksgiving…thanks for sharing this!
I made these the other day and they were great! a hit at work! yum! thanks!
I stumbled across your blog from a Facebook friend and made these brownies last night. DELICIOUS!! I doubled the recipe and it does just fit in a 9×13 pan and took about 60 mins to bake. It’s worth the wait for them to be chilled in the fridge. The flavors are even more delicious that way.
Oh YUM! And gorgeous, to boot. I never thought pumpkin and chocolate go together either, until I tried it! 🙂 Now I’m hooked. Good idea to double up on the cheesecake layer…you can never have enough pumpkin cheesecake after all!
Thank you so much for participating in our event! These brownies look amazing. They say Halloween to me for sure!
I made these– now I love them! Will be repeated each fall 🙂
Amazing! I loved these so much I played with them a bit and made cranberry cheesecake brownies for my christmas baking.(I didn’t stumble on to these till christmas.) I’ll let you know when I put those up on my blog! With credit to you of course!
Lexi – cranberry cheesecake brownies sound very intriguing. Can’t wait to see them.
Hi Jen! I made these for Heather@BFM’s (comment listed above) birthday and she loved them! Unfortunately I could not find the Hershey’s Special Dark cocoa powder (I tried 3 stores) so I had to make them with the regular cocoa powder. Can you tell me where you found the Hershey’s Special Dark??
Kasey – I have actually had a hard time finding it as well. I had actually all but given up on it until one day it caught my eye at the grocery store. I proceeded to buy all three containers. I would say just keep an eye out for it and good luck!
1/2 cup of flour seems like very little. Is that correct?
Pup – Yes, that is the correct amount of flour. Most brownie batters have very little flour in them.
Just made these- delicious! I only had the milk chocolate powder, so I’m excited to try it again with the special dark powder.
I doubled the recipe and it perfectly filled a 13×9 pan so you might try it. 🙂 And they are amazing. Also I used margerine not butter and found they were more moist. Happy Baking!
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I made these with my nieces and over all they were pretty good, but something about the pumpkin part tasted off. Still, fun and festive to make!