Mini Pumpkin Spice Chocolates (7 Ingredients, No Bake)

Mini Pumpkin Spice Chocolates (a 7 ingredient no bake treat that sets in 30 minutes)

how adorable are theseeeee!! chocolate and pumpkin spice is truly a match made in heaven and these mini pumpkin spice chocolates are proof of just that. a soft spiced pumpkin filling sitting between two thin layers of 70% dark chocolate, 7 ingredients, no oven, and they set in the freezer in 30 minutes. you need a few minutes and a few ingredients and these cuties could be yours.

how this recipe came about: i have been deep in pumpkin recipe testing this autumn and if you have ever baked with canned pumpkin you already know the problem that comes with it; the awkward amount of leftover puree sitting in ur fridge with absolutely no plan attached to it.

115g is roughly what i had left over after another round of testing and rather than let it sit there until it went off i mixed it with nut butter and spice and spooned it into a pumpkin mold i had been meaning to use.

the first batch i made i filled the molds too high and had no room left for the top chocolate layer so they came out as little open faced pumpkin tarts lol, which is how i learned to leave a gap.

if you are also staring at half a tin of puree, my no bake pumpkin truffles are the other recipe i developed around that exact leftover.

on taste, the dark chocolate hits first with that lil snap, then the middle is soft and almost fudgy and the pumpkin spice comes through warm rather than sharp. they are closer to a filled chocolate than a truffle or a bar, the filling never fully hardens, it just firms up enough to hold.

and they are mini, which somehow makes them taste even better, i do not know what it is but everything in a lil size just tastes better lol.

one thing to note on sizing though, my mold holds 12 so that is what i got give or take, but how many you get and how big each one is will vary greatly depending on the mold you are using, and that will also impact the macros per chocolate if you are tracking.

onto the pumpkin puree, my favourite ingredient here from a nutritional POV. the science behind that orange colour is beta carotene, which ur body converts into vitamin A, and it is the same compound that gives carrots and sweet potatoes their colour.

beta carotene is fat soluble, which means it needs fat alongside it to actually be absorbed, and between the nut butter, the coconut oil and the dark chocolate this recipe is absolutely covered on that front.

pumpkin is also really low in calories for the volume it gives you, so it bulks out the filling without making these heavy. one thing to flag though, make sure you are using pumpkin puree and not pumpkin pie filling. the filling is already sweetened and spiced and it will throw the whole recipe off.

the nut butter is the body of the filling and 4 tbsp is what takes it from wet puree to something spoonable that sets. i mixed tahini and almond butter and i would really recommend doing the same if you have both.

tahini on its own is slightly bitter and a bit sesame-y against the pumpkin which i love but it can read as savoury, and almond butter on its own is sweeter and creamier but a bit one note. mixed together you get the creaminess from the almond and that lil savoury edge from the tahini.

peanut butter is the one i would skip, it bulldozes everything else in the bowl every single time.

one practical thing: stir ur jar properly before you measure. if you scoop the oily layer off the top of a natural nut butter the filling splits and goes greasy instead of smooth.

now the coconut oil, which is the ingredient doing the actual setting. 3 tsp goes into the filling and it is not there for flavour, it is there because coconut oil is solid below roughly 24 degrees and liquid above it. so when the mold goes in the freezer the coconut oil firms up and takes the whole filling with it.

that is also the trade off you need to know about; these are a cold treat. leave them sitting out on the counter for half an hour and the middle softens back up and you lose the structure.

i keep mine in the freezer and eat them straight from there, they only need a couple of minutes out before they are perfect.

the fridge works great too if you want them set but not ice cold, and if ur kitchen is cold in the winter they might be completely fine just sitting out. it really just depends on what texture you prefer.

on sweetness, 2 to 4 tbsp of maple syrup and where you land in that range depends entirely on ur pumpkin. the sweetness varies a lot brand to brand, some tins are 100% pumpkin and others have sugar added, and if you are using puree from a pumpkin you cooked yourself it will be different again depending on the variety and how long it roasted for.

so start at 2 tbsp, taste it, and work up to 4 from there to ur preference. the dark chocolate on both sides is unsweetened enough that it pulls the whole thing back, so what tastes slightly under sweet in the bowl usually lands perfectly once it is set between two layers of 70%.

i use maple rather than caster sugar because i wanted the recipe to be refined sugar free, and maple also brings its own caramel note that sits really nicely next to the spice.

a note on the spice. 1 tsp of pumpkin pie spice is my starting point and you can push it up if you like it spicier, the filling layer is thin so the spice has to carry.

if you want to mix ur own, the spices normally in it are Ceylon cinnamon, ground ginger, ground nutmeg, ground cloves and ground allspice at roughly a 3:2:1:1:1 ratio.

and please NO cassia cinnamon. cassia is the cheap supermarket default and it is high in coumarin, a compound that is not great for the liver in regular amounts, whereas Ceylon has barely any. it is such a simple swap and it will truly benefit ur body long term.

you can also get away with just cinnamon and ground ginger here, i have tested it and it is very close.

the chocolate is 70% for a couple of reasons. at 70% and above you are getting a decent amount of cocoa flavanols, the polyphenols in cocoa that have been looked at for blood flow and inflammation, so you are stacking those on top of the beta carotene from the pumpkin.

flavour wise the bitterness is what keeps these from being sickly, because the filling is sweet and soft and the chocolate needs to cut through it from both sides.

the 1 tsp of coconut oil in the melted chocolate is worth mentioning too; it thins the chocolate out so it pours into the mold properly and coats the base evenly instead of sitting in a thick blob, and it softens the set just slightly so you get a clean bite rather than a shatter.

i want to talk about why pumpkin and dark chocolate work so well together nutritionally and not just flavour wise, because this is my favourite kind of pairing. the science behind it is that these two are covering different ground and then actively helping each other out.

pumpkin is bringing fat soluble antioxidants, mainly that beta carotene, and dark chocolate is bringing the cocoa butter that needs to be present for ur body to absorb them, so eating them in the same bite gets more of that beta carotene into you than eating the pumpkin on its own would.

and it goes the other way too; dark chocolate is a really good source of iron but it is the plant form of iron which is harder for the body to take up, and pumpkin brings the vitamin C that helps with exactly that.

then you have the antioxidants themselves working on different pathways, the carotenoids from the pumpkin are fat soluble and the cocoa flavanols are water soluble, so you are covering both sides rather than doubling up on one. the fibre in the pumpkin also feeds the gut bacteria that break those cocoa polyphenols down in the first place.

none of this is why i made them, i made them because they are cute and delish, but it is a lovely bonus.

onto the layering; i am using the word technique very loosely here lol because we are just adding chocolate and pumpkin to a mold, but you have two options.

if you want a complete chocolate shell where you cannot see any of the pumpkin filling until you bite into it, spread the chocolate all the way up along the sides of the mold so the cavity is completely covered, then flash freeze.

if you want the pumpkin layer visible like i have in mine, do not bring the chocolate all the way up the sides, that way you get that lil layer of orange pumpkin sitting in between the two chocolate layers. flash freeze, add in the pumpkin filling, extra chocolate on top and place in the freezer!

either way, leave a visible gap at the top when you add the filling because that is where the second chocolate layer goes. overfill it and the top layer has nowhere to sit, which is exactly what happened to my first batch lol. 30 minutes in the freezer and they pop straight out of silicone.

if you want more lil no bake chocolate things like this, my 3 ingredient peanut butter cups use the same freeze, fill, freeze method and take even less time, and my matcha chocolate cups are the version i make when i want something a bit more grown up.

and if you are properly in autumn mode, my invisible apple cake is mostly fruit held together by the thinnest layer of batter and it has no added sugar at all.