Cookie Butter Brown Sugar Streusel Bars – These easy and fast bars combine three things I love: Cookie Butter, brown sugar, and streusel topping. The bars are soft, tender and moist in the center with lots of chewiness around the edges.
Cookie Butter. Brown sugar. Streusel topping.
Three things I love, all rolled into one.
These bars are based on my one-bowl blondie recipe that I’ve relayed and parlayed. It uses melted butter, which means no mixer. They come together in five minutes by hand in one bowl, so you have precisely one item to wash.
Make the bars by melting one stick of butter in a microwave-safe bowl, then add an egg, brown sugar, vanilla, cinnamon, and stir to combine. I used light brown sugar since it’s less robust than dark brown, and I didn’t want to overwhelm that glorious cookie butter flavor. I made sure to use heavy hand when adding the cinnamon and vanilla as I always do; they’re two of my favorites.
Then, stir in a heaping one-third cup of Trader Joe’s Smooth Cookie Butter or Creamy Biscoff Spread. Biscoff and Cookie Butter are virtually interchangeable, especially in baking, and Biscoff is available in many grocery stores and big box retailers like Walgreen’s and Wal-Mart. Or you can order Biscoff Spread from Amazon or from Lotus Bakery. No excuses please that you can’t get it.
Or just make your own Homemade Cookie Butter. It’s not exactly-exactly the same as the real thing, but very close. And in these bars, it would be exactly perfect. The Huffington Post wrote an article about this recipe, which was pretty cool.
If you’ve never had Cookie Butter or Biscoff , the easiest way to describe it is to imagine gingerbread cookies, cinnamon, and spices, pulverized into a thick, dense, rich spread. It’s thick like conventional peanut butter, not thin or runny like almond or sunflower seed butter. The flavor is unlike any other spread; so unique and wonderful.
Eyeballing it right out of the jar and into the mixing bowl is fine. I hate to waste precious cookie butter that becomes stuck to the sides of a measuring cup, both wasting it and creating more dishes in the process. A little extra won’t hurt if you eyeball things on the more generous side like I do.
There’s a tiny bit of grittiness from the crushed gingery cookies, which adds to its appeal.
After stirring in the cookie butter, stir in the flour until just combined, and transfer the mixture to a foil-lined 8-by-8-inch pan. The layer won’t be very thick in the pan, but it’s going to be topped with glorious streusel topping.
To make the streusel topping, combine half of one stick of butter, cinnamon and sugars, oats, flour, and either stir it together, cut it together with a pastry cutter, or just use your hands until pea-sized buttery nuggets form. I use my hands because it’s the fastest and in less than a minute, it comes together.
Sprinkle the streusel evenly over the batter in the pan. It’ll seem that there’s lots of it, almost too much, but it magically soaks in while the bars bake. Plus, I love streusel topping and can never have too much. I could and do go around picking it off. Case in point, these Mango Muffins with Streusel Topping
Bake the bars for about 30 minutes and until the center is set and the edges have firmed up. The edges are the best clues to the bars being done because it’s hard to really see what’s going on in the center of the pan underneath all that streusel topping. At 29 minutes, I observed edge pieces that were quite firm and crusting over, and knew it was time to pull the pan from the oven.
Once out of the oven, I drizzled two tablespoons melted Cookie Butter over the top of the bars, to add both visual appeal and boost the flavor even more.
They’re everything I hoped they’d be, and more. The cinnamon-and-spice quality is definitely present. Cookie butter is full of gingerbread cookies and cinnamon, and since I added to the cinnamon load by adding it to the batter and to the streusel topping, the bars were bursting with a warm, comforting quality.
Coupled with vanilla, and the depth of flavor from the all-brown sugar sweetened batter that takes on caramel tones while baking, the flavor combination is just heaven sent. If Cookie Butter could get any better, pairing it with extra cinnamon, vanilla, and brown sugar is how.
There’s also plenty to chew on. Mono-textured desserts like custards and puddings are usually too blah for me. I like to sink my teeth into things, and these bars are just that. The streusel topping crisps up and adds so much texture to an otherwise soft and smooth bar. The bars require some serious chewing and chomping as well as some dental floss later on to get all that texture out from your teeth.
The underside and the edges baked up extra-chewy, which was a pleasant surprise. I didn’t even use bread flour, which makes things chewier than all-purpose. The interior of the bars are dense, tender, moist, soft, and just melt in your mouth. The top streusel layer protected the interior from the oven’s heat, so it stayed wonderfully soft and moist. The brown sugar caramelizes while baking and adds so much caramely depth of flavor.
There are no chemical leaveners used in this recipe; no baking powder or soda, so the bars stay flat, dense, and are not at all cakey. I dislike cakey blondies or brownies. If these were brownies, they’d be the super dense, fudgy variety, with zero amount of cakiness.
I make so many desserts and although we always enjoy them well enough, but not every single thing is earth-shattering, and doesn’t get my family oohing and ahhing. These, however, were oohed and ahhed about plenty.
The recipe makes just 9 squares, which is what I typically yield from my 8×8 pan recipes, and those 9 pieces went quickly. Gone in 24 hours.
I want one more bite.
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Cookie Butter Brown Sugar Streusel Bars
Ingredients
For the Bars
- ½ cup unsalted butter, melted you could also use browned butter
- 1 large egg
- 1 cup brown sugar, packed (I used light; dark may be used for more robust flavor)
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 2 teaspoons cinnamon
- heaping 1/3 cup smooth Cookie Butter (or creamy Biscoff; peanut butter will lend a different flavor but may be substituted; or use Homemade Cookie Butter
- Âľ cup all-purpose flour
- pinch salt, optional and to taste
For the Streusel Topping
- ÂĽ cup unsalted butter, half of one stick, softened
- ½ cup whole rolled old-fashioned oats, not quick cook or instant
- ÂĽ cup brown sugar, packed (I used light; dark may be used for more robust flavor)
- 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
- 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
- 1 + teaspoon cinnamon, to taste (I used 2 teaspoons, add to taste)
- 2 tablespoons Cookie Butter, melted for final drizzle after baking
Instructions
- For the Bars - Preheat oven to 350F. Line an 8-by-8-inch pan with aluminum foil, spray with cooking spray; set aside. In a large microwave safe bowl, melt 1/2 cup butter, about 1 minute. Allow the butter to cool momentarily so you don't scramble the egg. Add the egg, 1 cup brown sugar, vanilla, 2 teaspoons cinnamon, and whisk or stir until smooth. Add the heaping 1/3 cup Cookie Butter, and stir to incorporate. Add the flour, optional salt, and stir until just combined; don't overmix. Pour batter into prepared pan, smoothing the top lightly with a spatula; set pan aside.
- For the Streusel Topping - In the same bowl you made the batter in (provided you scraped it fairly clean with a spatula), add all the streusel ingredients except the 2 tablespoons cookie butter for final drizzle post-baking, and work the mixture with a spoon, a pastry cutter, or your hands until small pebbles form. Sprinkle topping evenly over base layer (it looks like there's quite a bit, but it seeps in during baking).
- Bake for about 30 minutes, or until center is set and not jiggly; and the edges are set and have pulled away slightly from sides of pan. It will be hard to determine how set the center is because it's hard to see what's going on underneath the streusel topping and edges are the best clues. I baked for 29 minutes, at which point most edges were quite firm, crusted over, and the corners were crisping. Testing for doneness in the center with a toothpick is another clue; toothpick should come out mostly clean.
- After bars emerge from the oven, heat 2 tablespoons of Cookie Butter in the microwave to melt, about 15 seconds. Immediately and evenly drizzle Cookie Butter over the top. Allow bars to cool in pan for at least 30 minutes before slicing and serving. Store bars in an airtight container for up to 1 week at room temperature, or up to 3 months in the freezer.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
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Related Recipes:
Biscoff Marshmallow Chocolate Bars (no-bake) – Fast, easy, and 5 minutes to make. A twist on the bars my grandma used to make with pink and green marshmallows and peanut butter. These use regular marshmallows, graham crackers, and it’s glued together with a melted Biscoff-chocoalte mixture
Caramel Peanut Butter & Jelly Bars (GF with Vegan adaptation) – The base and the top streusel layer are one in the same, a major time-saver. PB & J, brown sugar and oats, with caramel sauce baked right in
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Peanut Butter and Jelly Blondies – The blondies have peanut butter mixed into the dough, and peanut butter is swirled on top. They were the springboard for today’s recipe, although they use PB rather than cookie butter, but the ratios and principles are similar
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Do you like Cookie Butter or Biscoff?
Streusel Topping?
Feel free to link to your favorite recipes.
I actually bought these at a community bake sale, and they were so delicious I had to find the recipe to make them again myself! I’ve been trying hard not to eat them all in one sitting! Just awesome, and something pretty different from all the brownies and chocolate chip cookie recipes out there!
I am glad that you love these bars! And yes, these are very different than many of the other brownies and bars out there!
I found these when googling recipes using cookie butter. They are literally the best things I have ever tasted! I’ve made them twice in the last 2 weeks!
Glad they are literally the best things you’ve ever tasted! I made these a few years ago when cookie butter was all the rage (sort of like an Instant Pot now…lol) and glad that the google search pulled this up!
I made these once exactly as the recipe is written, and they vanished within hours! Delicious. Today, I went to make them again. I kept getting distracted by my 3 little kids, and ended up forgetting to add the flour!! I checked on them at 25 minutes and wondered why they were behaving weirdly. I let them go another 10 minutes, for a total of 35 minutes. It wasn’t until they were sitting there cooling that I realized my mistake! Well, let me tell you- the results were actually really awesome! Almost like a baklava texture. They are pretty oily, but I cut them and then set them on paper towels and that helped. Next time I’ll kick my little distractions out of the kitchen, and stick with the original version… but for now, I’m thoroughly enjoying my “cookie butter baklava” for dinner :)
I have made things like that before that turns out to be a very happy accident! Glad your cookie butter baklava is what’s for dinner :)
In case anyone is wondering, I found out today that these bars are FABULOUS made with Trader Joe’s pumpkin pie spice cookie butter!
That’s great to hear!
Thank you for sharing this recipe! I’ve made it 3 times now! Thank you for posting many sweets recipes that do not require a stand or handheld mixer :-)
Thanks for trying the recipe and I’m glad it came out great for you! I love recipes that are no-mixer! Not having the extra dishes to do is key :)
Will earth balance sub ok for the butter? 1 to 1 or should it be adjusted at all? Just going dairy free for my breast feeding baby and hoping to find some sweet treats.
You know I haven’t tried the recipe any way other than the way I wrote it, so your best bet is to just play around on your own and hopefully things will work out ok.
Thanks! Off to the store I go!
Hello I love your website and you have given me so many new recipes to try! I have a question though, you specify not to use quick oats for the streusel. I assume that is because they cook much faster than traditional oats. But looking in my cupboard that’s all I have.
I would not use them because they act like flour, not like oats, and the streusel will be too flour-ey I imagine. You can try it but I haven’t and probably wouldn’t….good luck!
I made your Cookie Butter and while I absolutely adore it, I need to cook something else with it, so I can stop eating it out of the container every time I open the fridge! These look yummy! I will be trying them this weekend for our church Christmas Coffee Shoppe dessert potluck! I have lost track of how many of your recipes I have tried now, but they have all been delicious!
I know how it is to want to eat it out of the jar! So glad you’re enjoying it and I think it’ll be perfect in these bars! Thanks for your support and trying so many of my recipes!
Would I be able to use homemade cookie butter in these bars?
It would depend on if it’s runny or thicker – if it has the consistency of storebought CB or PB, then yes. If it’s thin and drippy and runny like some homemade nut butters can be, then I’d say no.