Is there anything better than s’mores caramel cookie bars? This sweet recipe combines delicious s’mores with a caramel chocolate filling and all sandwiched between cookie dough.

This Smore’s cookie bars recipe has a gooey cookie layer, filled with graham crackers for a crunch, marshmallows, and chocolate for a molten interior, and it’s all topped with more cookie dough that is perfectly crispy.

How to prepare brown butter at home

This cookie bar recipe uses brown butter, which is butter that has been cooked until the milk solids toast, creating a nutty caramelized taste to your cookies. Brown butter is used in many of our recipes, like our bbccc (brown butter chocolate chip cookies!), cookie fries, or brookies.

Essential to brown butter: a spatula, a light-colored large pan, and of course, butter.

When you brown butter, you want to brown room-temperature butter; avoid using cold or frozen butter, as it will splatter a lot. You need to constantly stir the butter to prevent it from burning.

Start by placing the butter into a light colored large pan, turn on the stove, and keep it on medium-low.

Butter stages when browning butter

(1) The butter melts. The butter will go from solid to liquid.

(2) Yellow butter. The butter has melted, and it has turned a yellow color.

(3) Bubbling. There’s going to be a lot of bubbling, and it’s important you don’t stop stirring.

(4) Browning. The milk solids will start to brown, the butter will start turning a golden-brown color, and then deep amber. It’s important to stop at the right time and remove from the stove; you don’t want burnt butter!:(

Grab these ingredients

• Sugars: a mixture of brown sugar and powdered sugar.
• Butter: unsalted is my preferred choice.
• Salt: enhances the flavors and balances the sweetness.
• All–purpose flour: provides structure to the cookie bars.
• Chocolate: Use your favorite caramel chocolate. My favorite choices are Ghirardelli sea salt caramel chocolate and Milka chocolate. Plus, chocolate chips.
• Eggs: room temperature.
• Graham crackers: they add a nice crunch.
• Marshmallows: mini and/or large-sized.
• Baking powder.

Do you need to make caramel for this recipe?

No! We are using chocolates that have caramel inside. You can choose your favorite chocolate. In the end, we ended up having to use two different brands: Ghirardelli and Milka, both of which are delicious.

But! If you want to use caramel, you can definitely use it. I recommend you keep it in the middle layer to prevent it from burning and to keep it trapped in the center. There’s nothing worse than burnt caramel, seriously.

How to layer S’mores caramel cookie bars

This recipe for s’mores cookie bars has different layers, all of which are important for this recipe. Some layers add a nice crunch, some molten chocolate and stickiness from the marshmallows, and then it’s all trapped with cookie dough, which will hold everything together.

Bottom layer: cookie dough.

Middle: crushed graham crackers, caramel chocolate, and marshmallows. You can use mini marshmallows or big ones, or even both; we used both for this recipe.

Top: cookie dough, this layer can be imperfect, it’s okay if it shows the marshmallows, which is your goal, or you could add some extra on top too.

Best tips to make cookie bars at home

1. Don’t skip browning the butter; it’s a very important step in this recipe, and if you skip it, you will not get the same results, as you will have too much butter.
2. Cover the smores cookie bars with aluminum foil, and remove the foil in the last 10 minutes of baking. This will help you achieve the right color in your marshmallows, preventing burning.
3. After baking the cookie bars, make sure to let them cool down for at least 1 hour so they don’t break.
4. You can freeze the cookie bars.

What tools do you need for cookie bars?

The tools we will use for S’mores cookie bars are very similar to the ones we will use for recipes like our Nutella cookie pie, Funfetti scoopable cookies, or sea salt caramel cookies.

• Pan: light-colored pan, here is where you will brown the butter; it’s important that the pan is light colored or you could accidentally burn the butter.
• Spatula: to stir the butter to prevent burning, you will also need the same spatula to combine the flour into the cookie dough.
• Whisk: to whisk together some of the ingredients from the dough.
• Mixing bowl: You need just one large mixing bowl, that’s where you will prepare the cookie dough.
• Parchment paper: two sheets of parchment paper to line the pan.
• Square pan: 8-inch (20 cm) square pan, I like using one with sharp edges, like the USA PAN. It doesn’t really matter; do whatever you prefer.
• Aluminum foil: You will need it to cover the cookie bars when baking.

Our Place Pan

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Spatula

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USA Pan square

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Storing tips for caramel cookie bars

Caramel cookie bars can be stored on the counter or in the freezer. If you store them in the counter, I recommend that you cover them very well; the best choice would be keeping them in an airtight container.

I like to slice them into 9 squares before storing them, so I already have the portions made, and I don’t need to worry about that every time I want to enjoy a sweet treat.

How to freeze cookie bars

A year ago, we shared a recipe for cookie bars that we followed the same freezing method. You can freeze the whole pan with the cookie bars or in slices. The first option is recommended when you know you will need it for an event and will need to warm up.

Storing s’mores bars in portions is best when you want to enjoy a sweet treat randomly.

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