Every so often, my husband comes across something on the interwebs that looks interesting. I know he’d like to bake them, but he really doesn’t have the time and, well, I do have this blog thingy, and I do like doing something nice for my very nice hubby, so…
He gets some pretty darned tasty cookie bars, I get a blog post, and our friends get to enjoy some of the leftovers.
‘Cause this is one seriously rich cookie bar.
Seriously good, too, so thank you, nice folk at Betty Crocker, for sharing the recipe, and the cool tip to line the baking pan with heavy duty foil to make the cookie bars easy to pull out of the pan and cutting into neat little cookie squares.
I should also note that, since it is from Betty Crocker and all, the cookie mix called for is thiers, but, I think it is kinda cool that they call out on the front of the package that their mixes contain no artificial flavors or stuff.
And besides, if you’re like me and misread your pantry, you’ve already made your own sweetened condensed milk, right?
INGREDIENTS
•1 (1 lb 1.5 oz) bag chocolate chip cookie mix
•1/3 cup butter, softened*
•1 egg
•1/2 cup sweetened condensed milk
•1 cup finely chopped Snickers™ candy bars, about 8 fun-size
•1/2 cup plus 2 tbsp M&M’s™
•1/2 cup chopped pecans
*1/3 cup of butter equals 5-1/3 tablespoons. I used the remaining 2-2/3 tablespoons for the sweetened condensed milk and it worked a treat.
Heat your oven to 350º and line an eight inch square baking pan with heavy duty aluminum foil.
Put the Snickers bars in the bowl of your food processor (a mini processor works great here) and pulse until nicely chopped.
Combine the cookie mix with the butter and egg in a mixing bowl until you have a soft dough. Shape the dough into a loaf, then cut 2/3 of the loaf off and press into the bottom of your foil lined baking pan.
Pop into the oven for 15 minutes.
Remove the pan from the oven and pour the sweetened condensed milk over the partially baked cookie dough.
Top this with the Snickers, M&M’s, and pecans.
Take the remaining 1/3 of the cookie dough and crumble it over the top of the candy and nut layer.
Sprinkle the remaining twp tablespoons of M&M’s over that (I may have used more M&M’s because, why wouldn’t I?), then return the pan to the oven for another 25 minutes or so, until the dough is cooked and the top a nice golden brown.
OK, here’s the bummer part of this recipe…
remove from the oven and allow to cool completely – the nice Betty Crocker folk said three hours (!)
*sigh*
It really was worth the wait, tho, and the foil made it a snap to lift the cookies out of the pan before cutting into squares with a mezzaluna – which is also wicked handy for slicing pizza.