The Genius Way To Make Cookies For A Crowd Is So Easy, You'll Never Go Back

When making cookies for a crowd, there are many important steps you don't want to miss along the way. But you can simplify the process significantly while still delivering a crowd-pleasing cookie by transforming a batch of individual cookies into cookie bars.

Instead of dirtying various baking pans and spending 20 minutes doling out tablespoons of cookie dough in tedious rows, you can simply add the whole bowl of cookie dough into a greased metal 9 x 13 baking dish, pressing it into an even layer before baking it. Cookie bars have the same chewy consistency as their cookie counterparts with a slightly crisp top. And it's much easier and quicker to cut the bars into individual cookie squares once they're cooked and cooled. Plus, creating cookie bars gives you the opportunity to bring more layers to the mix. Many of our different types of dessert bar recipes slather cookie bars with frosting and sprinkles, smash crunchy nuts, pretzels, or candy into the top layer before baking, or layer the cookie dough with fruit jam or a delicate curd. You will have to adjust baking times to accommodate a thick, solid bar as opposed to individual cookies, which bake much faster. A cookie bar recipe will take 20 to 25 minutes to bake in a 350-degree oven. You'll know the bar is ready when the top is a light golden brown, puffed up, and devoid of the glossy, greasy sheen of raw cookie dough.

While any homemade cookie recipe will work in bar form, you can make cookies for a crowd even easier with store-bought cookie dough and store-bought frosting. It may not be as good as a scratch-made recipe, but there are plenty of ways to upgrade store-bought cookie dough like incorporating brown sugar or espresso powder into it or adding a few drops of almond or vanilla extract. Plus, you can make stuffed cookie bars with two types of store-bought cookie dough by adding the first cookie dough flavor as the base, spreading a layer of salted caramel or chocolate ganache, and topping with a different flavor of cookie dough.

If you're willing to spend a bit more time on cookie bars, you can make brookies, starting with a layer of store-bought chocolate chip cookie dough and topping with store-bought brownie mix. If you're set on making cookie bars from scratch, there are many simple cookie dough recipes to make the cooking process easy and cost-effective. For example, sugar cookies are little more than butter, sugar, eggs, and flour that you can dress up with colorful sprinkles and top with bright pink icing reminiscent of the virally popular grocery store sugar cookies. Peanut butter cookie dough is just as simple. And you can make the dough into a PB&J cookie bar by topping it with strawberry jam, crushed roasted peanuts, and coarse sugar.