Nutter Butter Bars

If you love peanut Butter and chocolate together, these bars are going to be your new go-to. Just five ingredients — cookie dough, Nutter Butters, and a box of brownie mix — layered up and baked into something that tastes way more impressive than the effort it actually takes. They disappear fast every single time.

Why You’ll Love These

Only 5 ingredients — cookie dough, Nutter Butters, brownie mix, eggs, and oil. That’s it.
Incredible layered texture — chewy cookie on the bottom, soft crumbly Nutter Butter middle, fudgy brownie on top, all in one bite
Basically impossible to mess up — even on your worst kitchen day, these come together
Great for making ahead — they freeze beautifully, so you can stash a batch for whenever you need them
Always a crowd-pleaser — people ask for the recipe every single time

A Little About the Ingredients

The cookie dough — I usually grab the refrigerated chocolate chip kind, the log you slice or the tub you scoop, doesn’t matter which. Once somebody handed me peanut butter cookie dough at the store because they were out of chocolate chip and honestly? Might’ve been better. I go back and forth on which one I actually prefer, ask me on a different day and you’ll get a different answer.

Nutter Butters — just the regular ones, not the mini kind, though I did use minis once when that’s all the gas station had (don’t judge me, it was an emergency situation, I’ll explain some other time). You want the full-size ones so they actually cover the pan in neat-ish rows.

Brownie mix — any fudge brownie box will do. I’ve used the cheap store brand and I’ve used the fancy one with the little pouch of extra chocolate syrup inside, and honestly the cheap one holds up just fine here since it’s getting doctored up anyway.

Ingredients

(makes one 9×13 pan, though I’ve done a bigger batch in a half Sheet Pan when feeding a crowd — see notes)

1 (16 oz) tub or log of refrigerated chocolate chip cookie dough — or peanut butter, your call
18 Nutter Butter cookies, give or take — sometimes I only fit 16 depending on how I lay them out, doesn’t ruin anything
1 (18.3 oz) box fudge brownie mix
2 eggs
⅔ cup vegetable or canola oil
3 Tbsp water

How I Actually Make Them

Preheat your oven to 350. Line a 9×13 pan with parchment — and I mean actually line it, don’t skip this, I learned that the hard way scraping burnt sugar off a pan for forty-five minutes while muttering things I won’t repeat here. Give the parchment a quick spray with nonstick spray too, just for good measure.

Press the cookie dough into the bottom of the pan with your fingers. It’s sticky and annoying and you’ll swear at it a little — that’s normal. Just keep pressing until it’s an even-ish layer covering the whole bottom. Doesn’t have to be perfect, this isn’t a cake decorating contest.

Now lay your Nutter Butters right on top, flat, in rows. This is the part my kids used to argue over — who gets to place the cookies — which still baffles me a little, but hey, free labor, I wasn’t about to complain.

In a separate bowl, mix your brownie mix, the eggs, oil, and water together until it’s smooth-ish. Pour that whole thing over the cookies, spreading it out so it covers everything — the cookies will peek through here and there, that’s fine, that’s supposed to happen.

Into the oven it goes for about 45 minutes, though — and this is important — every oven is different and every brownie mix bakes a little differently, so start checking around 40. Mine runs a little hot so I usually pull them a touch early. The center might look soft still when you take it out. Leave it. It firms up as it cools, and if you cut into it too soon you’ll get a gooey mess, which — full disclosure — has happened to me more than once and honestly it’s not the worst thing in the world, just eat it with a spoon at that point and call it pudding.

Let the pan cool completely on a wire rack before you even think about slicing. This is the hardest part. I usually fail at this step, cutting a corner piece “just to check” while it’s still warm, every single time, and every single time it falls apart a little. Worth it though.

Ways I’ve Switched It Up

Swapping in peanut butter cookie dough instead of chocolate chip leans into the peanut butter theme a bit more if that’s your thing. I tried it once with Oreos instead of Nutter Butters when I was out and it was good but different, more of a cookies-and-cream situation, less peanut buttery obviously. There was also the one time I tried adding a swirl of peanut butter into the brownie batter before baking and it sunk to the bottom and got weirdly dense in one corner — not a total failure, the piece still got eaten without complaint, but I haven’t repeated it.

Storing These (Or Trying To)

They’ll keep at room temperature in an airtight container for about a week, though in my house “a week” is theoretical because they never actually survive that long. You can also freeze them — I wrap individual squares in plastic wrap and toss them in a gallon bag, and they’re good for a couple months that way. I have absolutely forgotten a container of these in the back of the freezer before, found it months later, and it was… still fine? Maybe don’t quote me on the exact timeline there.

Anyway. Cut them smaller than you think you need to — they’re rich — though nobody in my family has ever actually followed that advice, myself included. Good with a glass of milk, good cold straight out of the fridge at eleven at night when you tell yourself it doesn’t count because the lights are off. I think that’s about everything, though I’ll probably remember some detail I forgot the second I hit publish on this.