Chocolate Cookie Butter Bars

The other half is so good about his dieting self discipline...I kind of feel bad for him...that his wife bakes what he shouldn't be eating like all the time. While I was baking these bars he said I was evil and I had better get them out of the house. My co-workers, on the other hand, are very happy to have me. Because of him I now have food guilt. When I go to the grocery store with him our cart is mostly filled with fresh fruit and vegetables...when I go by myself it's sugar, chocolate, and all kinds of junk food. I keep thinking the people in line in front of me are watching me load up the conveyor belt...judging me...thinking wow what a fatty. That being said this last trip to Trader Joe's along with the cookie butter and loads of chocolate, I swear I had everything pumpkin in the store...shame or not...I was getting this...all of this!

For those of you that have not tried cookie butter yet, stop what you are doing and go to the store right now and buy yourself a jar.  It's cookie butter at Trader Joe's or Biscoff at other grocers. This stuff is so amazing that I've been found eating it right out of the jar with a spoon. Trader Joe's just came out with Cocoa Swirl Cookie Butter and I just had to grab a jar. If fact, just telling you guys about it right now made me get up and go grab a spoonful. I'm powerless against it. I knew I wanted to make some bars with it and to make these bars even better I chopped up some of their cookie butter filled dark chocolate bars and threw them in as well. You will not be disappointed!

Chocolate Cookie Butter Bars

Ingredients:

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, room temperature

3/4 cup Trader Joe’s Cookie Butter swirled with Cocoa

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 egg

2 tsp vanilla extract

1 3/4 cups flour

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

4 Trader Joe’s speculoos bars (cookie butter filled dark chocolate), chopped

1/4 cup sweetened condensed milk

Directions:

1.  Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line a 13x9 baking pan with foil and spray with non stick cooking spray.

2.  In a medium bowl whisk together flour, baking soda, and salt, and set aside.

3.  In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment (or using a large bowl with a hand mixer) cream together butter, cookie butter, granulated and brown sugar, until light and fluffy.

4.  With the mixer on low beat in the egg and then the vanilla.

5.  Then gradually add in the flour mixture until just combined.

6.  Turn the dough out into prepared pan and smooth out with a spatula, bottom of the measuring cup, or your hands, whatever works.

7.  Sprinkle the chopped chocolate bars over the top, pressing down slightly, and drizzle the sweetened condensed over the top.

8.  Bake in preheated oven for 17-23 minutes, mine spent 20 minutes in the oven. Then let cool completely in the pan on a wire rack before lifting out of pan and cutting.