Peanut Butter Cup Cookie Dough Crumble Bars – These bars are soft, chewy, dense and buttery! And when topped with Peanut Butter cups, it makes for a delicious treat!
It’s been awhile since I’ve made a gooey pan of bars.
Or baked peanut butter cups into something. These make up for lost time.
They’re the best bar I’ve made in recent memory, and I can’t keep my hands off them. If you’re looking for a fast and easy layer bar with results that far exceed the minimal effort spent, these are the ones.
Prep and assembly takes 10 minutes, no mixer is required, and you can stir everything together in one bowl. I love bars and desserts that come together in no time and that create a minimum amount of dishes.
They have a cookie dough base layer, which is topped with mini peanut butter cups. Sweetened condensed milk is poured over the top and handfuls of cookie dough are crumbled before baking. So easy.
Begin by melting one stick of butter. Stir in an egg, sugars, vanilla, flour, and baking soda. The dough is thick and dense.
Press the dough into an aluminum foil-lined and cooking sprayed baking pan, but not all of it. Reserve one-half cup of dough and set it aside. It’ll be crumbled on the top later.
I urge you to line your pan, leaving overhang, so you can just lift the bars out. Plus, it makes cleanup a breeze. Nothing says dealbreaker on a quick and easy dessert like sweetened condensed milk that caramelizes all over your baking pan and you have to literally chisel it off.
Sprinkle the mini peanut butter cups over the dough base. Or use diced full-size peanut butter cups, or other diced candy bars. Use up leftover Easter candy, or whatever odds and ends you have. Candy is candy, it’s all going to be good, use what you have. Rolos, Snickers, Milky Way, Three Musketeers, or similar.
Pour just over half of one can of sweetened condensed milk over the top. Use the other half to make 7-Minute Microwave Caramels. You can make those in the microwave while the bars bake in the oven, which is exactly what I did. My house smelled wonderful from caramels in the microwave with peanut butter, chocolate, and cookie dough in the oven. And this is why I run, every day.
After flooding with sweet milk, lightly crumble the reserved cookie dough in irregular, marble-sized chunks.
Try not to sample too much along the way. Easier said than done.
The hardest part of the recipe is that you must let the bars set up for about 3 hours before slicing or you’ll have a literal hot mess. Let them cool on the counter for an hour, then place the pan in the fridge for at least two hours, or overnight. Lift out with the foil overhang and make nice, clean, pretty squares.
Alternatively, you could just dig in with spoons as soon as they’re cool enough from the oven if you don’t care about clean cuts or devouring this, family-style. As in, the whole family dives in with a spoon.
The cookie dough base is squishy soft in the middle, dense and buttery. The edges raise while baking and turn firmer and chewy. They’re no chocolate chips added and the richness and pure cookie dough flavor really shines. These are for cookie dough lovers who can appreciate a really flavorful slab of dough.
There’s just enough golden cookie dough on top to sandwich in some of the gooey filling, but not so much that the dough overpowers the other flavors. I prefer crumbles and crisps to double-crusted pies because that top layer of crust is just too much dough. I like things sprinkled rather than totally enclosed with dough.
The peanut butter cups provide texture and a nice pop of peanut butter and bit of chocolate in every bite.
The creamy, rich, sweetened condensed milk takes on caramel and vanilla tones while baking. It cloaks the cookie dough and peanut butter cups in a sweet, milky, luscious bath.
Gooey and sticky, sweet and creamy, soft and chewy, chocolate and peanut butter, vanilla and caramel, all in one.
Please pass the napkins.
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Peanut Butter Cup Cookie Dough Crumble Bars
Ingredients
- ½ cup unsalted butter, melted (1 stick)
- 1 large egg
- ¾ cup light brown sugar, packed
- ¼ cup granulated sugar
- 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
- 1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- pinch salt, optional and to taste
- 1 heaping cup mini Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, or diced full-size cups; or substitute with another type of diced candy bar such as Snickers, Milky Way, Butterfinger, Heath, Rolos
- about 1/2 cup sweetened condensed milk, just slightly more than half of one standard 14-ounce can
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. Allow the butter to cool momentarily so you don't scramble the egg.
- Add the egg, sugars, vanilla, and stir vigorously to combine, for about 1 minute.
- Add the flour, baking soda, optional salt and stir until just incorporated. Batter will be quite thick.
- Reserve 1/2 cup batter; set aside. Turn remaining batter out into prepared pan, smoothing it lightly with a spatula.
- Evenly sprinkle the peanut butter cups over the batter. Pour sweetened condensed milk over the top. Using your fingers, lightly crumble the reserved cookie dough over the top in irregular, marble-sized chunks.
- Bake for about 30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out without cookie dough batter clinging; it may not be clean because you're going through other layers and you may have to peck around to find a testing place. Edges will be firm and golden. The sweetened condensed milk should nearly be set in all places, and possibly only a little jiggly in the very center of the pan. Bars will firm up more in pan as they cool.
- Allow bars to cool in pan for at least 3 hours before slicing and serving. Expediting this by placing pan in the refrigerator is okay if you're in a hurry. Extra bars will keep airtight at room temperature for up to 1 week, or in the freezer for up to 3 months.
Notes
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
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I just found your website and I am LOVING all of these healthy and tasty foods. I have literally just spent an hour browsing all of your recipes and I’m a Reeses addict so these crumble bars are on my to do list for this weekend..for sure.
By the way I featured your Healthy Fudgy Brownie Bites recipe on my Top 15 Healthiest Tasty Treats list. If you want a badge for your site or just to check it out feel free to look at it out here: https://nickieslittlebubble.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-top-15-healthies-tasty-treats.html Have a good day!
Thanks for finding me, poking around on my site, and for the feature!
How you always manage to take simple ingredients I have in my cupboard and create such mouthwatering desserts will never cease to amaze me! This looks sinfully divine. Your picture with the fork mark should be illegal – so.good. Looks so soft and peanut buttery. Wow. I am in love this recipe.
“always manage to take simple ingredients I have in my cupboard and create such mouthwatering desserts” — that is actually one of my mental goals when I create a recipe. Make something everyone has, everyone can do, but make it a bit more…special, maybe, than they would have thought to do :)
Drool….
(I reserve this particular comment strictly for the best of the best…)
Well thank you then! :)
Oh, Averie! You’re killing me with all of these cookie bars… Can I come over? ;)
The description of these bars are making me wish I had a huge pan for breakfast!
You are the queen of brownies & bars! These look great Averie!
I needed a fast, slap it in a pan recipe, and these happened :)
Gorgeous bars, as always, Averie! I am loving the one-bowl recipes you’re creating. Keep ’em coming!
One bowl is where it’s at!
Those look fabulous! The perfect potluck cookie
And where I grew up, things like this would have been perfect potluck food! (rural midwest, church basements, no one had any money and there was nothing fancy about anything but it sure was good!)
Wow these look amazing Averie! I can’t wait to try them!
These look irresistible, Averie! I’m a sucker for any dessert involving PB. Yum!
Thanks, Kelly! I am sucker for them as well :)
Oh yeah! These will be made! And soon!
Thanks, Amanda, and I hope you love them as much as I do if you end up trying them! :)
Stop. It. Now. These look amazing!
I would have the hardest time waiting for these to cool! I have no self control AT ALL when it comes to peanut butter cups, Averie! That combined with a soft cookie base and sweetened condensed milk! Hold the phone, I am now more starving than I thought I was. This cleanse is not working in my favor right now. I want to reach through the screen! I love making bars and I knwo you do too – so much less work involved & so mindless. There are so many ways to spruce these up using different candies!
I love the pretty bokeh in these photos too. The fourth one down is my favorite. I have been studying my favorite food photographer’s work lately in preparation, you being one of them. Trying to improve and make it perfect!
so much less work involved & so mindless = YES, agreed!
and reading blogs like mine on a cleanse, yeah, not easy. Going for a run, even, and smelling the food smells in the air that would normally either gross me out or I wouldn’t notice, on the cleanse I wanted them! Like the smell of a corndog and ketchup. I havent had a corndog in 25 years but it smelled good to me on my cleanse. Lol
Anyway thanks for the photography compliments. It all depends on the day, food, etc. some of the time. I just don’t know what I’m going to get. Sometimes I have to open up the aperture and shoot at a f/3.5 and it’s a little too bokeh-ey sometimes, but due to inferior lighting or really dark food (like these were) it’s the only compensation. And btw how RANDOM you saw that cleanse pic on TS. They were the only food site that accepted it. And that you then saw it there. Fate. :)
Wow, these look amazing Averie! Anything with Reese’s PB Cups in them are perfect! :)
These look insanely delicious!!! I love making bars because they’re easy to transport and serve, plus you can make them super fun like these!! My favorite bars I’ve made recently are your Funfetti Cake Batter Blondies, but I think these might just edge those out. I’m a sucker for peanut butter cups. Thankful that I’m DONE with the cleanse while looking at these! ;)
These edge those out. Yes. Totally! And glad you’re done with your cleanse right now, too! If you need one to make in the future, these are the recipe to try. A new favorite!
I could not keep myself from looking at this recipe..Willpower alone could not keep me from gooey and peanut butter. If you are addicted to peanut butter, you can mix some in with the sweetened milk. You may need to warm it up a bit to make sure it mixes in. A little oatmeal can be added to the dough too! It would be totally be healthy then..lol
I do the PB + sweetened cond milk mixture that then floods everything in these
https://www.loveveggiesandyoga.com/2012/03/coconut-peanut-butter-magic-cake-bars.html
and these
https://www.loveveggiesandyoga.com/2011/08/white-chocolate-vanilla-marshmallow-cake-bars.html
and these have oats in them and are AMAZING
https://www.loveveggiesandyoga.com/2011/11/marshmallow-peanut-butter-double-chocolate-pillowtop-bars.html
Actually those 3 recipes are among my top 10 recipes on my entire blog, period!
love it!
These look just as amazing as the rest!