Monster Cookie Bars

 

It’s about time I finally admit it … I’m a grown up. I knew one day this would happen. I own a house. I like to be in bed before midnight, even on the weekends. The majority of my clothes come from Banana Republic or Ann Taylor. I refer to 21 year olds as “kids”.  And last night at the bar I complained the music was too loud.

So given my senior citizen status, I decided that it was finally time to pony up and get myself a grown-up camera. Luckily I work with a lot of the creative guys at work who are smart in making big purchases on things like this. So my friend Joe recommended a camera within my budget, and I got it right before the weekend which was perfect for today’s cookie baking. I took lots of pictures this weekend down the Cape of sunsets and beach scenes. I could use some education in using the fancy camera, but you’ll definitely be able to tell a huge difference in these cookie pics tonight. I think I might even make cookies more often just as an excuse to use the camera more.

I had some friends down the Cape this weekend which was great. My friend Allie and I spent some time on Pinterest yesterday and stumbled across this recipe for Monster Cookie bars, which looks like it has about 1000x your recommended daily sugar amounts …. so we decided to make them.

Ingredients:

Cookie dough (crust and topping)

  • 1 cup of butter, melted and browned
  • 1 cup of light brown sugar
  • 2 cups all purpose flour
  • 2 cups quick cooking oats
  • 2 eggs
  • 1½ teaspoon baking powder
  • ½ teaspoon baking soda
  • ½ cup mini chocolate chips
  • 2 cups M&M Pretzel, crushed

Chocolate filling

  • 1 cup of milk
  • 14 oz. semi-sweet chocolate
  • 7 oz. sweetened condensed milk
  • 2 cups mini Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups (about one 8oz. bag)
  • 2 cups M&M Pretzels, crushed

Step 1:  Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. First, you will make the cookie dough. Melt the butter and set it aside to cool. In a separate bowl mix together flour, oats, baking powder and baking soda. Set aside.

Step 2: In a mixer, combine the cooled melted butter and sugar. Add eggs and beat until well incorporated.

Step 3:  Add the dry ingredients into the wet batter and mix until well blended. Fold in the chocolate chips.

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Step 4: Crush up 2 cups of pretzel M&Ms. My baking assistant Allie was in charge of this step. In lieu of a food processor, we put the M&Ms in a plastic zip loc and crushed them up using a rolling pin. Mix the M&Ms into the cookie dough batter until everything is mixed well. Put the cookie dough aside.

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Step 5: To make the chocolate filling, put milk, chocolate and sweetened condensed milk in a saucepan over low heat. Gently stir the mixture until the chocolate is melted. Remove from the heat.

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Step 6: In a greased 13×9 glass baking dish, place 1/3 of the cookie batter and press to ensure it is evenly spread out flat.

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Step 7: Pour the chocolate filling on top of the crust.

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Step 8: Sprinkle the mini Reese’s cups and second bag of crushed M&M pretzel on top.

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Step 9: Crumble the remaining cookie batter over the chocolate filling. Bake at 350 degrees for 25-30 minutes. Remove from oven and cool.

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The hardest part is going to be letting these cool. We didn’t do very well. We lasted about 5 minutes before we grabbed a fork and dug into these. It really is a crazy sugar high, but they are delicious. I have them in the fridge cooling right now so that I can cut them into small bars for my coworkers tomorrow. I can’t wait to see people bouncing off the walls Monday morning.

The weekend was great. Summer is winding down, so we’re doing our best to make the most of our last weekends down the Cape.

We had a delicious dinner lakeside last night, that I’m pretty sure we’re all still full from.

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I will never be able to take sunset photos with my iPhone again. The new camera is just amazing at capturing this view.

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And of course we had to end Saturday night at The Squire, where we left with some pretty entertaining stories. Including a guy in a baby blue blazer who handed out business cards that said “so…how about that drink?” Classy. But the award for best Snapchat of the evening, hands down goes to Colleen. Who captured this moment where I was trying to get out of talking to someone. No one apparently picked up that scratching my ear meant “save me!”. Although I think screenshotting snapchats is taboo, this one had to be saved.

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And now its 9pm, which means we need to let our inner teeny bopper take over as we watch the MTV VMAs, in hopes that N*SYNC makes their rumored debut. It’s tearin up my heart when I’m with you …..