The Gunny Sack

White Chocolate Cookie Bars

Cookie bars are an easy dessert to make and they are crowd pleasers! When we were invited to a friend’s house last weekend, I wanted to bring a dessert to share but wasn’t sure what to make. I’ve been drooling over the delicious magic crust recipes by Dorothy at Crazy For Crust so I decided to give it a try by making White Chocolate M&M’s Valentine’s Day Cookie Bars!



The crust in this recipe is a cake mix! Isn’t that easy? I used Valentine M&Ms and White Chocolate Chips for the topping and everyone loved the bars!


They are soft, crunchy, sweet and gooey! The other ladies wanted the recipe so they could try making them too.


Mix together a cake mix, a stick of softened butter and an egg. Pat it down in a 9×13″ pan. Pour the bag of Valentine M&M’s over the top and sprinkle on the white chocolate chips.


Drizzle can of sweetened condensed milk over the top of everything before baking.


I can’t wait to try another variety of these bars!

White Chocolate M&M’s Cookie Bars
by The Gunny Sack

1 white cake mix
1 egg
1 stick softened butter
1 bag Valentine M&Ms
1 cup white chocolate chips
14 oz sweetened condensed milk

Preheat oven to 350°F. Mix together cake mix, egg and butter. Pat into a foil lined and well greased 9×13″ pan. Pour bag of M&Ms over the cake mix crust. Sprinkle white chocolate chips over the M&Ms. Drizzle sweetened condensed milk over everything. Bake at 350°F for 25-30 minutes. Allow bars to cool before cutting.
Recipe inspired by Butterscotch Pecan Magic Bars

One of The Gunny Sack’s readers, Mari, asked a couple of great questions and I thought I would add the answers here because others might be wondering the same things. I took the bars out of the oven when the edges started getting golden brown at about 25 minutes in my oven. The sweetened condensed milk got all bubbly and looked a little strange. It basically becomes caramelized. I wondered if I had done something wrong too but they were perfect.

As far as cutting them, I allowed the bars to cool in the pan for a while. Then, I lifted them out with the foil and let them continue cooling on the counter. I would like to say that we waited until they had cooled completely but who am I kidding…we had to try them! I carefully peel the foil away from the edges (good thing for the greased foil). The edge of the bars stuck to the foil and crumbled a bit but they stayed intact for the most part. Let me know if you have any other questions!

Love making bars? Here are a few more recipes:
White Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars
Chocolate Revel Bars
Oatmeal Crunch Bars

Comments

  1. Stacey says

    June 7, 2015 at 9:36 pm

    Hi! I have made these twice now, even tho the flavor is awesome, it seems my cake mix crust is rising above the mm’s and chips and it doesn’t look as nice as yours pictured.

    is there something i am doing wrong?

    they only variance i did was used yellow cake mix instead of white.

    Reply

  5. Lindsay says

    October 28, 2013 at 10:05 pm

    These look great! I’m actually going to make them this week but use the “Candy Corn” Halloween M&Ms. They are white chocolate but just colored orange, yellow, and white. Thanks for the inspiration!

    Reply

  6. Rvpgirl says

    March 30, 2013 at 4:48 pm

    I made these for Valentine’s Day and loved them, so today I used Easter colored M&M’s and made more! I also tried lining the pan with parchment paper instead of foil. I still sprayed it just to be safe, but they didn’t stick at all and the paper pulled right off in one piece. Thanks for the recipe!

    Reply

  7. mandasara says

    February 16, 2013 at 1:14 am

    Just made these for Valentine’s day and everyone loved them. The recipe was so easy and once they cooled down and hardened a bit they were easy to cut into bars. They are delicious!

    Reply

    • Tonia L says

      February 11, 2013 at 10:11 pm

      Hi DD! Nope you just combine the cake mix, egg and butter and pat it into the bottom of the pan. Then, add the rest of the ingredients to the top and bake! Isn’t that great? That is why others call them magic bars!

      Reply

  9. Mari Graulau says

    February 3, 2013 at 2:31 pm

    I made these this morning for a gathering later this afternoon. Fingers crossed that they turned out good. Hoping I didn’t leave them in the oven too long. What should they look like when they come out? Do you allow them to cool completely in the pan before cutting? Very silly questions but I am a bit of a perfectionist when I bake, just want to make sure I am doing it right. Thanks for the yummy looking recipe!

    Reply

    • Tonia L says

      February 3, 2013 at 3:08 pm

      Thank Mari! Your email address isn’t enabled for replies. I added a response to your great questions to the post in case others are wondering the same thing. Thanks for asking!

      Reply

    • Tonia L says

      January 23, 2013 at 2:54 pm

      Hi DeeDee! Yes, you can make it without M&Ms but I would put something else on instead like another kind of baking chips, cookie pieces, chopped up candy bars, pretzel bits or nuts. I’m not sure if the M&Ms soften but the bars were definitely not too crunchy. Even my 18 month old nephew ate one of the bars without any problems. Another option would be to add less M&Ms! I hope you enjoy them as much as we did! 🙂

      Reply

    • OneSpecialDeeDee says

      January 23, 2013 at 9:55 pm

      THANKS.. I wish the baking chip people would add more Holiday colored baking morsels like M & M’s do.

      Maybe I could use vanilla and chocolate chip chips…..or I just might make it your way and see how they come out.

      Reply

    • Tonia L says

      January 23, 2013 at 2:47 pm

      Thanks Anne! I should’ve been more specific in my description. Although I’ve found my content on another site in the past it isn’t happening right now as far as I know. The problem is that when the full content is in the RSS Feed, scraper can redirect the entire feed to their own website. This happened to me and it took hours of work to figure it out. In the end, the person owning the other website said it was a mistake and took everything down. Anyway, I just found a tutorial about how to keep this from happening again so I put it to good use!

      Reply

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