Nutella Butter Cookie Bars

I love Nutella and Biscoff spread. I realized I haven’t used them in any recipes lately and I wanted to fix that! I have a couple of different recipes that I have pinned lately. I noticed that nearly all of the recipe that I have pinned lately have been bar cookies, and I certainly have made quite a few bar cookies lately. I love bar cookies and could make them all the time.

This recipe is a butter cookie with vanilla pudding mix in the dough. The original recipe didn’t specify what flavor of pudding to use, but vanilla seemed the most logical choice. I suppose you could get exotic and try something else if you’d like! I ended up doubling the recipe and baking the bars in a 9” x 13” pan. They bake for about the same amount of time and be careful not to over bake as you don’t want the cookies to be dry.

As I said, I doubled this cookie to bake in a larger pan. That gave me extra dough, theoretically, based on the area of the pan, but the layer of dough is quite thin. I used a little less Nutella than the recipe called for. I microwaved the Nutella for about 30 seconds to make it more spreadable, which helped a lot. My top layer wasn’t perfect, and I really had to work to get the dough thin enough to cover, but it works out in the end. Who minds if there is a little Nutella sticking out here and there? When I tried these cookies, I was instantly reminded of the flavor of a cookie that my grandma used to make. The crispy cookie part reminded me of these chocolate stuffed cookies she used to make. The filling flavor is different, but none the less, this cookie evoked a lot of great memories.

Nutella Butter Cookie Bars

1/2 cup butter, room temperature

3/4 cup sugar

1 egg

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

1 1/2 cups flour

3 tablespoons vanilla instant pudding mix

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar

3/4 cup Nutella

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line an 8” square baking pan with foil and spray the foil with nonstick cooking spray.

In a large mixer bowl, beat the butter and sugar on medium until combined. Add the egg and vanilla and mix again on medium to incorporate. Add the flour, pudding mix, baking soda, salt, and cream of tartar and mix on low speed just until the dough comes together.

Divide the dough in halves. Press half of the dough into the bottom of the prepared pan. Spread the Nutella on top of the dough. Use the remaining dough to create another layer over the Nutella. The top layer does need to be perfect, but try to cover the filling as much as possible.

Bake for 33-35 minutes, until lightly browned along the edges. Allow the cookies to cool before cutting into bars. 

Recipe from Picky Palate