Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars

If the best brownie ever and the most amazing chocolate chip cookie came together to make the perfect dessert, it might just be this chocolate chip cookie bar. Fudgy, gooey, crispy, crunchy, it has it all, including that brown sugar, that butter, that chocolate that works. Hey, you're watching Preppy Kitchen where I, John Kanell, teach you how to make delicious homemade dishes to share with your family and friends. These cookie bars are gonna whip up in a snap. So let's get started. First off, prep your eight by eight inch dish by lining it with parchment paper or foil. I like parchment paper better because it just fits so nicely in there. Like, look at this, perfectly in there. You can lift it right out. Nothing's in a tear either. Okay, set that aside. Now let's whisk up the dry ingredients, starting with two and a quarter cups or 270 grams of all-purpose flour, one tablespoon of cornstarch. I'm using a teaspoon of salt here. I want it to be like nice and like have a good bite to contrast with all the sweetness of the chocolate and the sugar. Now, one teaspoon of baking soda for leavening. Okay, whisk it all up, set it aside. And now for the wet ingredients. We've got some other parents coming over for a combined play date. So I thought these chocolate chip cookie bars would be like the perfect, like easy snack to have hanging around in addition to some coffee. Into a large bowl, I'm adding three quarters of a cup or 170 grams of a melted butter, two thirds of a cup or 133 grams of regular white sugar, and then one cup or 200 grams of brown sugar lightly packed. Okay, you can mix this up. It's in a form kind of a thick slurry now, a butter sugar slurry. If you have any like lumps of brown sugar, just like mash them up. Now I'm gonna add in one tablespoon of a nice vanilla extract and aromatic. I love it. And then two room temperature eggs. Switch to a whisk. And yes, you could do this in a stand mixer or with an electric mixer, but you know, if I'm making chocolate chip cookie bars, I don't mind getting a little exercise in. Whisk it together. Try not to eat this right now because it is just like heaven on a stick. I don't know what to say. It's delicious, but control yourself. And after it's whisked together, you're gonna dump in the dry mixture. This is so easy. It's like, hello, why isn't this every day? And I'm gonna use my spatula just to fold it in. I just think it'll be a little bit easier. And to be honest, I like the way it feels. It's so like, ah, it's bringing me some relaxation vibes. And once this gets to a point of like being mostly incorporated, we're gonna add our chocolate chips. And you have some choices here. Just chocolate chips? Sure. Add some more things? Why not? So you could add in like half a cup or a full cup of chopped toasted pecans or walnuts, macadamia nuts, whatever you like. And then for the chocolate itself, yes, you could use semi-sweet chocolate. If you're following along on the blog, that's what I specify. But today I'm gonna mix it up and use half and half, semi-sweet and bittersweet. So the only thing I'm gonna tell you is take the handful of chocolate chips and set them aside. This is so you can just dot the top of your cookie bars with some nice clean chocolate chips. The same thing like you would do with cookies. So set those aside. And now toss the rest in and fold them in. If you want, you could use M&Ms in here or butterscotch candy. It's really like whatever you enjoy eating. The only thing I want you to do is just try and distribute the chocolate chips fairly evenly so that, you know, one bar has like one chocolate chip and the other one is complete chocolate chips. No, you wanna have it be fairly, fairly even. And here you see in this step, we're just finishing up with the mixing as well. So any little pockets of the dry mixture are gonna be worked in there. This is ready to transfer to our prepared eight-inch baking dish. You could use a nine-inch baking dish as well. They'll just be a bit thinner, but that's like still totally delicious. Okay, plop this in here carefully. Actually, it doesn't have to be carefully. This is reminding me of my brownie recipe. You can click up here for that. Oh my God, that brownie is like the fudgiest, most delicious thing in the world with that nice crackled top. Ah, it's amazing. Okay, just smooth the top out. This recipe is seriously like the even less fussier version of a chocolate chip cookie because there's no worry about anything, anything at all. You're just dumping everything in, mixing it up. And now I can take my reserved chocolate chips and just dot the surface with them. I'm gonna just have some nice glossy chocolate moments all across the top. And you're gonna get that the best way if there's no cookie batter. One last thing before I forget, and this is totally optional, is you can take some flaked sea salt and just sprinkle it on top. Just a little bit of that crunchy, like salty bite with the chocolate and the brown sugar, you're gonna love it. Unless you don't, in which case, skip that step. It's up to you. All right, now you're gonna pop this into the oven for 30 plus minutes. It kind of depends on like how done you want them. Like, do you want that kind of like gooey, like delicious, like fudgy moment in the middle? Then 30 minutes. Do you want them baked so they're a bit more set up? Add an extra five or 10 minutes on there. It's really your personal preference. I'm currently intoxicated by this amazing cookie bar to be. Look at this. Do you see? What? So good. Oh my gosh. All right, this is now firm enough to remove without like it crumpling. You just wanna let it set. Remove that paper. Do you see how amazing this parchment paper situation is? It's one of my favorite things. We're just gonna cut these up into bars and they will go in a flash. It'll be so quick. You can go big or small, depending on how you feel. I don't know. Let me know in the comments if you want the edge piece or the middle. I'm conflicted myself. So I'll have both. Oh my gosh. Look at this. It's like a crime scene of chocolate. It's molten chocolate inside. Look at that. If you could smell this, you would be in heaven. I wanna like just have this with a bite of ice cream or some milk and go to sleep. No one's gonna notice if I just sneak one. If you like this recipe, check out my cookie playlist, all of my favorite cookies, and you're gonna definitely find your new favorite there too. Okay, it's time for a bite. Oh my gosh. I got like palpitations, it's so good. It really is the cookie version of a brownie. You've gotta try this recipe. The vanilla, the brown sugar, everything is working together and it just works. 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