Chewy M&M Cookie Bars

 

One of my long standing vices and guilty pleasures is to watch cooking shows.  When we subscribed to cable, I would watch the Food Network, the Cooking channel, etc.  Now that we have Netflix and Hulu for TV, I don’t have access to those channels.  I was originally sad but then I realized that there are a million different little cooking shows on YouTube.  Some vloggers are making a living at posting recipe videos on YouTube, which is amazing.  Two of my favorites are definitely Laura Vitale www.laurainthekitchen.com and Divas Can Cook www.divascancook.com.  These two ladies are awesome and really have taught me a lot about cooking different foods and recipes that I wouldn’t normally have tried. 

 

When I was trying to prepare for Silas’s birthday party, I was brainstorming about what kind of cookie would look cute with his monster theme.  I will freely admit that I am not a cookie or a cake decorator, so I am not trying to look professional with it.  I am just trying to fix something that will look cute and go with the theme.  That week Monique from Divas Can Cook posted a recipe video for her M&M Cookie Bars and I knew that I had found it.  I was using basic standard rainbow hued colors for his party, so M&M’s were the perfect complement to that, plus they would be good for little hands since we had a number of children coming to his party. 

 

I watched the video a few times and then sought out the actual recipe on her website.  Because it was right after Christmas and I went crazy baking this year, I had all the necessary ingredients on hand.  They were really easy to make and tasted awesome.  They were soft and chewy and sweet.  We got numerous compliments on them and the biggest compliment of all was that all of them were gone before the party was over.  I will definitely be making this again!  The dough, itself, is delicious and very customizable.   You could easily alter this recipe as well to include chocolate chips, different flavors of candies, like Reece’s candies, etc. 

 

M&M Cookie Bars

Prep time: 10 mins

Cook time: 40 mins

 

Ingredients:

2 ¼ cups flour

½ tsp salt

½ tsp baking soda

12 Tbsp butter, melted

1 cup brown sugar

½ cup white sugar

1 egg

1 egg yolk

2 tsp vanilla

1 ½ cups M&M’s

 

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 330 degrees F.   Line a 13x9 pan with parchment paper.  Combine flour, salt and baking soda in a small bowl and set aside.  Cream together melted butter and sugars.  I used a wire whisk for this but you could easily use a stand mixer, if necessary.  Stir in egg and egg yolk until well combined.  Stir in vanilla extract.  Combine flour mixture and butter mixture just until combined.  Be careful not to overmix or your cookies will become tough.  Add in 1 cup of M&M candies.  Pour dough into parchment lined pan and press down with clean hands until an even layer is achieved.  Work quickly as butter will make dough sticky with the heat of your hands.  Press remaining candy into the top of your cookie bar.  Bake for 40 minutes or until edges are set and a toothpick in the middle comes out clean.  (The original recipe calls for 25-30 minutes of bake time, but my cookie was REALLY underdone at that time.  Your oven may cook differently, so be aware.)  Immediately remove from pan and allow to cool completely.  Cut into squares. 

 

Enjoy!