Triple Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars

Ooey gooey triple chocolate chip cookie bars are chocolate chip cookies simplified. All the classic chocolate chip cookie taste without the hassle of making individual cookies, these chocolate chip cookie bars are the perfect treat when the cookie craving hits. Decadent but classic this chocolate chip cookie bar recipe doesn’t need you to scoop out dough for cookies. Instead, just press the dough into a pan, bake, and enjoy. These chocolate chip cookie bars are the perfect way to make a holiday treat or a treat any time of year with less effort.

This post is part of #Choctoberfest and sponsored by Imperial Sugar. All thoughts, opinions, and content are my own. For more info on #Choctoberfest and the awesome giveaway going on see below the post or check out my info post here.

You guys know I love my baking hacks right? I absolutely adore baking and used to make amazing scratch made desserts on the regular. But then I had a kid. And now, I’m having two more and absolutely zapped all the time.

So I don’t do fussy desserts anymore that require lots of individual attention, save for Christmas when I make sugar cookies and go to town with royal icing. That’s the fussiest, most time consuming I get. It happens once per year during my annual cookiepalooza in the kitchen when I literally bake all the cookies for like three straight days.

I don’t think that’s going to happen this year. At Christmas, I’ll either have two newborns (OMG!) and my preschooler or I’ll be nearly 36 weeks pregnant.

So what’s a Christmas cookie obsessed gal to do? My options: ignore the urge to bake all together and sulk about it, store bought cookie hacks, or simplify where I can and make things like chocolate chip cookie bars and enjoy homemade cookies without as much work.

So you know what I’m thinking for this year right? Triple chocolate chip cookie bars for the win!

The recipe comes together the same way a standard cookie recipe does. You cream together the wet ingredients, whisk together the dry ingredients and add them a little at a time. The only real difference comes in pressing the batter into a baking dish and baking it all in one go rather than making individual cookies. It’s sort of like when I make Shortcut Skillet Blueberry Baked Pancakes to save myself the hassle of flipping and babysitting the pancakes. Just set it and forget it. And enjoy a big slice of cookie bar.

Tips to Make the Best Triple Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars

Ingredients for Triple Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars on black — Ingredients for Triple Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars

This triple chocolate chip cookie bar recipe is pretty straight forward with all the usual suspects: butter, eggs, vanilla, flour, sugar, and chocolate chips of course. Now a note about the sugar: many people like to use equal brown sugar and white sugar. I am not a fan of that. I prefer to use more brown sugar for more flavor and the chewy texture it gives the bars. So you can see, I’m a bit picky about my sugar. So when I teamed up with high quality Imperial Sugar to develop this recipe I was thrilled. Imperial Sugar is celebrating their 175th anniversary and has a reputation for providing quality sugar products. They also have an amazing gallery of seasonal recipes that I love. Check that out here.

Spread the batter into a lined 9x13 baking dish — Spread the batter into a lined 9×13 baking dish

Aside from using quality ingredients, you should follow these tips to make a great chocolate chip cookie bar:

Use room temperature eggs and butter. At room temperature, eggs and butter mix into the batter better. In science-y terms (since baking is a science), room temperature ingredients form an emulsion that traps air. When the bars are baked, the air that is trapped in the batter expands as it heats, ensuring evenly baked cookie bars and a better texture.
Don’t over mix the batter! Speaking of texture, one of the best ways to get dense, heavy bars is to mix the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients past when the batter is just combined. Over mixing activates the gluten in the cookie dough. So what does that matter? The more this protein gets activated, the stringier and tougher it gets, making for crispy and not chewy gooey cookie bars.
Fold in the chocolate chips gently. For the same reason, I like to fold in the chocolate chips with a spatula. A couple of good stirs is all you need.

Arguably one of the best parts of making cookie dough: licking the spoon 🙂