If I had been on top of my game, I would’ve had these monster cookie bars with Easter-colored peanut butter M&M’s posted last week.  Oops.  There were  just so many other yummy things to be posted last week – this frittata, this salad, this flatbread…so. many. yums.  BUT, as you may have noticed – no sweets, and lots of healthy going on.  These bars will fix that!
I made these last week smack dab in the middle of my juice cleanse. Â I wasn’t trying to torture myself (though it sure felt like it) but was making them to send to my little brother, who just moved to a new city. Â Such a sweet big sister I am. Â And modest. Â Anyways, these monster cookies which was my second or third post EVER (so um, pardon the photos), are one of his all-time favorite cookies. Â They’re, in my opinion, THE BEST monster cookies – thick and chewy, and full of oats, peanut butter, Â chocolate chips, butterscotch chips, and M&M’s. Â They’re the best, I tell ya.
Howeverrrrr, they do have one fault: one batch makes a lot of cookies which means they take awhile to bake. Â With 3 eggs in the recipe, it’s pretty much impossible to cut the recipe in half without some super complicated bakers trick to cut eggs in half, which I’m unaware of. Â So, since I was doing my juice cleanse and didn’t want to be rolling out cookies for 2 hours, tempting me even more to shove cookie dough in my face, I turned them into bars. Â I also realized as I was adding the oats that I only had 2 cups of oats on hand, and the original recipe calls for 4 1/2 cups, so I switched up the ratio of flour to oats. Â My final changes to the original recipe were throwing in some peanut butter chips and using peanut butter M&M’s instead of regular M&M’s because let’s face it, the more peanut butter, the better.
Even though I had to wait 2 days to get a taste of them (I swear monster cookie bars were on the list of recommended things to eat post-cleanse…) they were so worth the wait. Â Everything about these are what I love about the monster cookies, except wayyyy easier and faster to make. Â Since the recipe for the cookies makes a LOT of cookies, these bars turned out super thick baked in a 9×13″ baking pan. Â I love thick bars but if you prefer them a bit thinner, you could definitely make them in a jelly roll pan and just bake them for closer to 20 minutes.
I love that these can be made festive with all of the different season M&M’s. Â You could also switch them up and use different kinds of M&M’s. Â My favorite is definitely the peanut butter but I think they’d be great with the pretzel or peanut M&M’s too.
Anything with pb m&m’s is a winnn! I love how gooey and delicious they look!
In the fall I did a juice cleanse for 6 days! How insane is that? I was trying to go for a week, but by day 6 I just couldn’t take it anymore. I had to chew something! How did your 3 days go? Bet it felt great to bite into these delicious cookie bars when you were done : )
6 days?! That IS insane. I was so ready for food after 3 days!
Bar cookies are totally underrated! I have PLENTY of clearance easter candy that I impulse bought this morning (oops), so I am more than ready to make these!
After I saw your comment yesterday I headed straight to Target on my lunch break to raid the Easter candy sales…thanks for reminding me! 🙂
I’m a huge cookie bar fan. Regular cookies don’t take that much work, but bar cookies are SO easy. They’re a faster way to get a cookie fix. These bars look good!
I pretty much hate scooping out cookies, so I almost always go the cookie bar route! Plus I think they are just better and chewier that way. 😛 These look AMAZING.
You know I really don’t make cookie bars anywhere near enough! I seem to forget about them I guess! These look amazing – I mean with all the oats, peanut butter chips, chocolate chips….
Even though I was in a chocolate coma this weekend, I would eat all of these.
Love cookie bars – so much faster and easier to get that much needed cookie fix. These look amazing, I love the sound of all the different chips in here – especially the pretty Easter M&M’s 🙂