Triple Peanut Butter Monster Cookie Bars – Soft, gooey bars loaded with M&Ms, chocolate and made for serious peanut butter lovers! So good!
I make my fair share of treats, and have the hodgepodge of random add-ins in my pantry to show for it.
Half-used bags of chocolate chips, peanut butter chips, and a random assortment of candy were taking over the cupboard so I found a home for them.
In these bars.
They’re the perfect bar to toss in everything but the kitchen sink.
Use this flexible and forgiving dough base as your opportunity to stir almost anything that’s plaguing your pantry into it.
What else are you going to do with 1/3 cup chocolate-covered sunflower seeds from your last Trader Joe’s impulse buy or that small handful of butterscotch chips from your last batch of cookies, or a few stray marshmallows.
Use up last year’s Halloween candy or Easter candy. Those Fun-Size Twix bars are begging to be diced and tossed in. Don’t pretend you don’t discover random candy from months ago. Well, I do. Life of a food blogger.
The bars come together in 5 minutes in one bowl, no mixer needed. Unlike making cookies, there’s no dough to chill, and they’re ready in under 30 minutes from start to finish.
I used my go-to blondie base, with a half-cup peanut butter stirred in, before stirring in the kitchen sink.
I had partially used bags of Peanut Butter M&M’s, peanut butter chips, chocolate chips, chocolate chunks, toffee bits, and included them all.
Because peanut butter is used three times – peanut butter that’s stirred into the dough, Peanut Butter M&Ms, and peanut butter chips – they pack a bold, peanut buttery punch.
They’re very moist and soft. The edges turn slightly chewy, while the interior remains a squishy, soft heaven.
The crunchy candy coating of the M&Ms and their firmness, coupled with Heath toffee bits, are the perfect texture contrast to the buttery, peanut buttery, dense, melt-in-your mouth dough.
There’s plenty of chocolate, too. Chocolate and peanut butter just go together. The abundance of melted chocolate chips is practically mandatory with all that peanut butter.
Soft, chewy, fast, easy, peanut butter used three times, and you can clean out your cupboards. That’s success.
And let’s face it, any time you can bake candy into a dessert, you won’t hear too many complaints.
Cleaning out your pantry never tasted so good.
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Triple Peanut Butter Monster Cookie Bars
Ingredients
- ½ cup unsalted butter, 1 stick, melted
- 1 large egg
- 1 cup light brown sugar, packed
- 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
- heaping 1/2 cup creamy peanut butter, use Jif, Skippy, etc.; don’t use homemade or natural – too runny
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- 1 cup Peanut Butter M&Ms
- ¾ cup semi-sweet chocolate chips or chunks, or a combination
- ½ cup Reese’s Peanut Butter Chips
- ⅓ cup Heath Bar Toffee Bits
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350F. Line an 8-by-8-inch baking pan with aluminum foil, spray with cooking spray; set aside.
- In a large, microwave-safe bowl melt the butter, about 1 minute on high power.
- Wait momentarily before adding the egg so you don’t scramble it. Add the egg, brown sugar, vanilla, and whisk until smooth.
- Add the peanut butter and whisk or stir until smooth and incorporated.
- Add the flour and stir until just combined, don’t overmix.
- Add all remaining add-ins and fold to incorporate.
- Turn batter out into prepared pan, smoothing the top lightly with a spatula. I like to strategically place a few M&Ms on the top of the batter for a nice visual effect.
- Bake for about 25 minutes, or until top is set. A toothpick inserted in the center should come out clean, or with a few moist crumbs, but no batter. Allow bars to cool in pan for at least 30 minutes before slicing and serving. Bars will keep airtight at room temperature for up to 1 week, or in the freezer for up to 6 months.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
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What’s the last pantry cleanout recipe you’ve made? What do you put in your Monster Bars?
Oh yes, the never ending 1/4 bags of baking chips! All that melty chocolate in a gooey bar soy day perfect. You weren’t kidding about cleaning out your pantry never tasted so good! MnMs make for fun pics, too (like sprinkles!)
Yes they do make for fun pics – vibrant and cheery! :)
Absolutely love these! Everything but the kitchen sink treats are awesome — I just had a compost cookies post on Monday! When everything you’re adding is delicious, how can you go wrong?!
And I bet your compost cookies were so good!
Well call me a monster because I am going to gobble these up! NOM NOM!
This is one, rich and delicious looking cookie bar!! Looks awesome Averie!!
Thanks Aimee – I know you make some delish bars, too!
Now these are my kind of Monster Cookies…in bar form, with TRIPLE peanut butter! What a great way to “compost” your kitchen pantry staples, hahaha! You are so very clever, Averie. Thanks for sharing more ooey-gooey goodness! xo
These look so rich and dense and gooey. Love all the pb in them! I think all my Halloween candy is gone, but there’s a little Christmas candy left and quite a bit of Easter candy. But for the most part candy has a very long shelf life so I always stock up for the long term.
I agree with you and sometimes I see something that I know I dont need at the time but know that one day it will come in handy – and it always gets used, even if it’s 6-12 mos later!
Love the dense bake on these! Fab!
These monster bars are after my heart! Love all the fun colours in there – a sure hit!
What a fabulous idea! They look so cute too :)
You mentioned that natural peanut butter wouldn’t work, does that mean that almond butter is a no-no as well?
It’s not that it ‘won’t work’ – it will probably ‘work- either natural PB or AB. The issue is that the bars won’t hold together as well b/c there’s not as much of a binder. Will they work and will they be moderately successful? Yes, probably. But not as successful in a solid, well-held together shape as what you see here. So I say use AB at your own risk…personally, I am a PB girl all the way and ALWAYS use PB over AB :) PB has way more flavor to me!
Those look so delicious. Especially now that I have a peanut butter obsession. Must put those on the ‘to make’ list.
Wonderful photos!
I bought some chocolate covered ginger candy out of the bulk bin and couldn’t eat it straight up, so I chopped it and put it in cookie dough with the remains of a PB jar scraped clean and a little bag of crunchy noodle things from a salad kit. That weird creation of about 6 cookies was very loosely based on a gingersnap–but not a hard crunchy one. I used your method for soft, thick cookies–brown sugar, cornstarch and dough chilling!
I just had a salad kit last night with those noodle things. I know exactly what you mean. I know the dough base you’re talking about with the brown sugar and cornstarch, and I bet your cookies were great!
Yes, I love this! You are dead on. Always bags of bits leftover in my pantry that I need to use up! Or if there isn’t it means my husband has eaten the leftover parts in the bag. We may or may not have a sweets “problem” in our house. :-)
I can’t even tell you how much stuff I have as a dessert blogger!
Those sound amazing. I would love to make some but we never ever have leftover candies. Or I do but then my husband hunts and snacks. He knows where I keep everything and loves to go nibble.
These look so soft and fudgy! Am exactly the same, I alwats find random packets of choc chips with just a few in them (from food photos I think! :-))
I’m the queen of 1/4 cup leftover.
I love that you could use up all the leftover random add-ins siting in the pantry. I think half of my stuff is expired though. But Jason won’t let me throw it away. He says if the bag is sealed, it’s fine!
By and large, with chocolate chips, baking chips, or any sort of sweet that’s sealed in a bag, I’d pretty much use it and agree with Jason. It would have to be fuzzy for me to throw out some Snickers or random butterscotch chips, etc. :)
Haha I love a recipe that also clears out the cupboard. I get so happy when I use up 4 half opened bags at once. And then when it turns out into something like this? Score!! The bars look absolutely perfect :) I go though phases with peanut butter and right now I am in a “I like” phase so these bars look extra good!!
I wish I went through ‘phases’ with PB – but they range from mild cravings to half jars in a sitting if I let myself! And there is nothing better than clearing out 4 partially used bags of randomness, for sure!