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 my gooooosh I think I hate you right now! Cookies and bars are my two favorite things (obvi) and I think this combination is madness. Kind of mind blowing, actually!
Knowing you, I KNOW you would love these little numbers :)
There is nothing about the title of this post that I dislike. I read it and saved reading this post for last. It’s like the dessert of my blog reading. :D
See the whole random bags of this and that isn’t really a problem for me because….well, because when I buy a bag of candy, I eat the whole thing. I’ve made myself sick on pb m&ms (my absolute favorite candy of ALL TIME) more times than I can count or should admit to. I never would have thought to combine toffee and peanut butter.
I think I blogged the same line today about chocolate and peanut butter pairing.
I seriously have a baking cabinet that you would die if you saw. I have seen your pantry in your recent pics. Mine looks…more like a professional restaurant, minus the organization – i.e. hoddgepodge
I have so much stuff and I do use it all, but I wind up with random leftovers until said usage comes along. So these were perfect :) Not surprising you like PB M&Ms, me too!
Look at all this deliciousness! I just used 3 huge peanut butter jars up in 10 days for random recipes, and like you – I will never get sick of using it in my baked goods!! These bars are amazing. So perfectly soft and bursting with a bunch of good stuff. I adore the combination of Heath toffee and PB, Averie! They are gorgeous; so colorful and festive! I’d happily make these with peanut butter M&Ms, butterfingers, and honey roasted peanuts. Oh man! So good.
Using all that PB in 10 days reminds me when I wrote PBC. It was INSANE the amt I would buy. I chuckle now just thinking back to checking out at the groc store with literally gallons in my cart at once. And the combo of flavors you just listed – mmmm, so good!
Dude! Pass me the pan and leave me alone with it. PLEASE!
These look soo amazing! My only problem is I don’t have half-used bags in my pantry right now- so disappointing!
Ok then it’s your excuse to go to the groc store and buy new!
haha oh man I have a number of remnants from Trader Joe’s impulse buys that could go in these bars! I really don’t make bars enough – and they’re so simple!
Ahhh, the TJs impulse buys. Glad you can relate :)
Made me smile: “I used my go-to blondie base, with a half-cup peanut butter stirred in, before stirring in the kitchen sink.” My sink is waaaay too big to fit into cookies!
These bars look divine and they are perfect to make for this weekend, with my family coming to visit. I’ll make some tonight and freeze a bunch for Saturday. You’re making me wish I had leftover candy, but I do have sunflower seeds, chocolate chips, peanut butter, a little bit of shredded coconut (‘coconut dust’, Andy calls it), dried cranberries, and Nutella. Ha! All of that might be a strange combo- we’ll see what makes the cut!
Not a strange combo at all – I bet it would all be good in the bars! If you do use coconut, it will dry out your batter more than the other add-ins, so don’t use tons – or else cut back on the flour a bit. Enjoy!
I did end up making these bars last night and they’re delicious! I used everything that I listed above, minus the dried cranberries and plus 1/4 cup chopped milk chocolate and 1 Tbsp cocoa powder (I like chocolate-y bars!). The Nutella did make them a bit too moist, so they never seemed totally done. But I’ve just kept them in the fridge and they’re fine- better than fine, the flavor is amazing! Nutella + peanut butter + chocolate was such a good idea.
Thanks for the inspiration :)
They sound wonderful! Nutella is thinner/drippier/runnier than PB so it takes longer to dry out in the oven so you can extend baking time in the future and tent pan with a sheet of foil if necessary to protect top surface from over-browning; or just keep them gooey and embrace it, which is what I would do :) Or add a little more flour. But I love the way they sound now. Thanks for LMK what you did & used!
These look insanely good! I have so much leftover stuff I need to get rid of, too. Perfect!
Have fun de-cluttering!
Cookie bars are my favourite fair treat. I am way to impatient to form cookies sometimes, so bars are so easy and portable. Triple peanut? Heaven!
My boyfriend brought me a 3 lb jar of peanut butter beause he knows how much I love it, so now I’ve been trying to find recipes to use it up in. These would be perfect for that… especially with all the candy leftovers I have sitting around from various recipes!
At the end of the post there are links to my 35+ and 75+ PB recipes posts – I bet you’ll find a few ideas there, too :)
Wow, these are a thing of beauty! I will be making these soon for my little monsters!
LMK what the lil monsters think about them, too!
This recipe is perfect for me!! I have so many half used bags in my cupboard it is not even funny. What a great idea for a cookie! Plus, these look delicious!
With all you bake, I am not surprised. It’s just the way it goes!
When the name of a recipe starts out with “triple peanut butter,” how could it not be amazing?! I love everything-but-the-kitchen-sink recipes like this one!
Thanks, Colleen and yes – I love decluttering!
My pantry looks the same way. I too mix something up with all the left overs, expect I make cookies… this is a good alternative, thanks!
So much faster than cookies – love pans of bars for that reason!
I just love all the fun colors. And even if I never made 1/8 of your recipes, I can’t stop staring at the pictures!! I haven’t done a pantry sweep dinner in a while. But it usually ends up having to involve canned and/or frozen veggies and some sort of sauce that I throw together to try to tie it together.
I wish my pantry sweeps were as healthy sounding as yours – but I do that same thing w/ frozen fruit in bags for smoothies. And thanks for the compliments re my pics :)
I love how versatile these bars are. I always have a few tablespoons or a fraction of a cup of chips and other random pantry items. This is such a great way to use them all up! (Raisins, I’m looking at you)
Enjoy! :)