Christmas Cookie Bars with M&M’s and Pretzels

Christmas cookie bars are a thick, chewy brown sugar cookie dough pressed into one pan and loaded with chocolate chips, M&M’s, crushed pretzels and sprinkles, then baked in twenty-five minutes and cut into squares. They taste like a bakery cookie with a salty crunch, and they skip the scooping, the trays and the batches entirely: one bowl, one pan, and twenty-four bars.

The recipe card is the Christmas version, with red and green M&M’s and holiday sprinkles on top. The bars in the photographs are the same dough dressed for any day of the year, with rainbow candy, rainbow sprinkles, mini chocolate chips and mini pretzel twists, baked in a glass dish. Only the candy changes, so pick the colors for the occasion and everything else stays the same.

Pictured: the any-season version. The bars in the photos were topped with rainbow candy-coated chocolates, rainbow sprinkles, mini chocolate chips and mini pretzel twists, and baked in a glass dish. The recipe card uses red and green M&M’s and holiday sprinkles for Christmas; the rainbow version is written out under Variations.

What Makes These Christmas Cookie Bars Better Than Cookies

A cookie bar is cookie dough baked as one slab, and it behaves differently from a cookie. There are no edges to overbake, the middle stays soft because the dough is thick, and the whole thing comes out of the oven at once. For a holiday, when the oven is already full, that matters. Christmas cookie bars take twenty-five minutes of baking and no attention while they do it.

This dough leans on brown sugar for chew and flavor, with a little white sugar for crisp edges, and it uses baking powder rather than soda so the bars rise slightly and stay tender instead of spreading. The pretzels are the part people remember. Crushed into the dough and scattered on top, they add salt and crunch that keep all that candy from tasting flat.

The toppings are pressed onto the surface rather than mixed all the way in, so every bar shows its candy. That is also why the colors are so easy to change: red and green for Christmas cookie bars, pastels for Easter, orange and black for Halloween, the whole rainbow for a birthday.

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Ingredient Notes

• Unsalted butter. One cup, softened to room temperature so it creams with the sugar. The melted-butter route, shown in the step photos, is under Variations.
• Brown sugar and granulated sugar. One cup of packed brown sugar, light or dark, and a half cup of white. Dark brown sugar gives a deeper, more caramel-flavored bar.
• Eggs. Two large, at room temperature so they blend without seizing the butter.
• Vanilla extract. Two teaspoons. This dough is simple, so use real vanilla.
• All-purpose flour. Two and a quarter cups, spooned and leveled. The Wheat Foods Council explains why all-purpose is the right choice here: its moderate protein gives a chewy bar that still cuts cleanly.
• Baking powder and salt. One teaspoon of baking powder and a half teaspoon of salt. The salt matters more than usual with this much candy.
• Semi-sweet chocolate chips. One cup. Mini chips, as pictured, distribute more evenly through a thin bar; standard chips give bigger pockets of chocolate.
• M&M’s. Three quarters of a cup, plus extra for the top. Red and green for Christmas, or any color mix you like.
• Pretzels. A half cup crushed into the dough, plus whole mini twists for the top. Salted, always.
• Sprinkles. Two tablespoons of holiday jimmies for the top. Nonpareils bleed their color into the dough; jimmies hold up.

Red and Green, or Rainbow: Choosing the Candy

Holiday M&M’s appear in stores from November and disappear in January, which is exactly when you may still want to make these. The good news is that any candy-coated chocolate works: regular M&M’s, mini M&M’s, or the sorted single-color bags sold for parties. Peanut M&M’s are too big for a bar this thin and should be chopped.

Whatever the color, keep about a third of the candy back for the top and press it in gently after the dough is spread, so the shells stay bright. Candy mixed into the dough can crack and streak in the oven; candy on top keeps its color. The same goes for sprinkles, which go on last and only on the surface.

If you want the bars to look like the photographs, use a rainbow mix with mini pretzel twists laid on top whole rather than crushed. The twists toast a little in the oven and look far more deliberate than they are.

How To Make Christmas Cookie Bars

Heat the oven to 350°F and line a 9-by-13-inch pan with parchment, leaving an overhang on the long sides so the slab lifts out in one piece. Everything else is fifteen minutes of mixing.

First, whisk the flour, baking powder and salt together in a bowl and set it aside.

Next, beat the softened butter with the brown sugar and granulated sugar in a large bowl for three to four minutes, until it is light in color and fluffy. A hand mixer or a stand mixer both work; a wooden spoon takes longer but gets there. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then the vanilla.

Then add the dry ingredients and mix on low just until no flour shows. Fold in about three quarters of the chocolate chips, the M&M’s and the crushed pretzels with a spatula, and keep the rest for the top.

Topping and Baking

After that, spread the dough evenly into the pan with an offset spatula or damp fingers; it is thick and will not level itself. Scatter the reserved chips, candy and pretzels over the top, press them in lightly, and finish with the sprinkles.

Finally, bake for twenty to twenty-five minutes, until the edges are golden and a toothpick in the center comes out with a few moist crumbs. Cool the Christmas cookie bars completely in the pan before lifting them out by the parchment and cutting them into twenty-four squares.

The step photos above show the melted-butter version of the same dough: the butter is melted in a small saucepan, cooled for five minutes and stirred into the sugars with a spatula instead of being creamed. It is written out under Variations, and it makes a denser, fudgier bar.

How To Tell When Christmas Cookie Bars Are Done

The edges tell you first. They should be golden brown and pulling away from the pan by a hair, while the center still looks a shade paler and slightly puffed. A toothpick pushed into the middle should come out with a few moist crumbs on it, not wet batter and not perfectly clean. Clean means the bars are on their way to dry.

Pull them at twenty minutes if your oven runs hot or the pan is dark metal, and at twenty-five if you are baking in glass, which heats more slowly. The bars keep cooking in the hot pan for several minutes after they come out, and that carryover is what leaves the middle chewy.

Done Christmas cookie bars are about an inch thick, golden at the edges, and soft enough in the center that a square bends a little before it breaks.

Make It Ahead

These are built for making ahead. Bake them a day or two before you need them, cool them completely in the pan, cover the pan tightly and leave it on the counter. The bars are as good on day two as on day one, and cutting them the day you serve them keeps the edges neat.

The dough can also be pressed into the pan, topped, covered and refrigerated for up to a day before baking. Bake it straight from the fridge and add three to four minutes.

Storing Christmas Cookie Bars

Keep the cut bars in an airtight container at room temperature for up to four days, with parchment between the layers so the candy does not stick. The fridge dries them out and dulls the chocolate; skip it unless the kitchen is very warm.

To freeze, wrap the squares individually in plastic and pack them into a freezer bag for up to two months. Thaw them on the counter for thirty minutes. The candy shells can craze slightly in the freezer, which changes nothing about the taste.

Variations and Substitutions

The Any-Season Rainbow Version (Pictured)

This is the batch in every photograph on this page, and it is the version to make for a birthday, a bake sale, or a school treat in the middle of June. The dough is identical to the recipe card; only the toppings change.

Ingredients. Three quarters of a cup of rainbow M&M’s or any candy-coated chocolate, plus a small handful for the top; two tablespoons of rainbow sprinkles; one cup of mini semi-sweet chocolate chips; a half cup of crushed pretzels for the dough and about twenty mini pretzel twists for the top.

Method. Make the dough exactly as directed, folding in three quarters of the candy, the mini chips and the crushed pretzels. Spread it into the pan, then arrange the whole pretzel twists over the surface, scatter the remaining candy and chips between them, press everything in lightly and finish with the rainbow sprinkles. Bake at 350°F for twenty to twenty-five minutes, adding three to five minutes if the pan is glass, as it was for the pictured batch. Cool completely and cut into squares.

Melted-Butter Method

Melt the cup of butter in a small saucepan, let it cool for five minutes, and stir it into the sugars with a spatula until glossy. Beat in the eggs and vanilla, then add the dry ingredients and the mix-ins as usual. The bars come out denser and chewier, closer to a blondie, and there is no mixer to wash. This is the method in the step photos.

Other Mix-Ins

White chocolate and cranberries. Swap the chocolate chips for white chocolate chips and add a half cup of dried cranberries for a red-and-white bar.

Peppermint. A half teaspoon of peppermint extract in the dough and crushed candy canes on top in place of the sprinkles.

Toffee. A half cup of toffee bits with the chips, the way they go into these salted toffee cookies, which also use pretzels.

Nuts. A half cup of chopped pecans or peanuts, folded in with the pretzels.

Gluten-free. A measure-for-measure gluten-free flour blend and gluten-free pretzels. The bars are a touch more crumbly, so cool them fully before cutting.

What to Serve with Christmas Cookie Bars

On a holiday cookie tray, these are the bar that disappears first, so cut them small. Put them next to something plain and something spiced: a gingerbread loaf sliced thin for the spice, and butterscotch chocolate chip cookies for the people who want a cookie that is not covered in candy.

For a dessert, warm a square for ten seconds and put a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top. For a party, stack the squares on a cake stand with a few extra pretzels and candies scattered around, which is how they were photographed. Cold milk or hot chocolate is the drink.

If you are building a whole tray of bars, cherry cheesecake bars and Oh Henry bars cover the creamy and the chocolate-caramel ends of the table.

Christmas Cookie Bars FAQ

More Questions About Cookie Bars

Make a pan of Christmas cookie bars for the holiday tray, and then make them again in rainbow colors when someone has a birthday. It is the same twenty minutes of work either way, and a batch of butterscotch chocolate chip cookies beside them fills the tin.