Carrot Cake Cookie Bars

Name: Carrot Cake Cookie Bars
Prep time: 20 min
Cook time: 35 min
Total time: 55 min
Yield: 24
Cuisine: American
Ingredients: 1 carrot cake mix; 1 stick of butter, softened; 1 egg; 1 teaspoon vanilla; 1/2 cup pineapple preserves; 1/2 cup chopped walnuts; 1 cup shredded coconut; 1 - 14 ounce can sweetened condensed milk; 1 cup Carrot Cake M&M's

Published: Mar 3, 2013 · Modified: Jun 20, 2022 by Jocelyn · As an Amazon associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. This post may contain affiliate links · 89 Comments

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Do you like carrot cake? These Carrot Cake Cookie Bars are a quick and easy treat to serve after Easter dinner.

Carrot cake bars topped with green and orange candies on a dark orange plate.

The other day I was shopping at Walmart, and I came across this season's newest M&M flavor. They created a white chocolate carrot cake M&M.

Now you either are an A person who decided immediately that it sounds nasty, or you are a B person who is intrigued and want to give it a try. I am usually a B person with most new flavors, unless they are sour. Sour candy gives me the heebie geebies! Just can't do it!!!

Anyway, I instagrammed a picture asking opinions on this new flavor, and sure enough, the results were about half and half on whether you guys would try these too. Of course being a B person, I brought them home with me.

I'm sure you are wondering how those M&M's taste. Let me tell you, I was pleasantly surprised. The white chocolate has enough cinnamon and nutmeg that it just gives it a very spicy taste that I actually liked!!!

I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do with the M&M's, until I was looking through some old recipes from last year. Does anyone else remember these Oreo Coconut Gooey Cake Bars? Right away I knew that is how I wanted to use the new candies.

And lucky for me, I had picked up a few different flavors of cake when they were on sale. There was a carrot cake in my cupboard just waiting to be used. Bars like these are so easy to make, especially when you rely on a mix. I know some people are against cake mixes at all cost, but I am not one of those people. Cake mixes are my friends when it comes to cookies and bars!

Let's start with these cookie bars. You will first mix up your dough by combining some softened butter, and an egg with the carrot cake mix. The sticky dough will get pressed into the bottom of a greased pan. Then the fun begins.

You need to decide on what kind of toppings you want your bars to have under the gooey sweetened condensed milk. One of my favorite cakes is a carrot cake, so I knew I wanted to incorporate those types of ingredients in the gooey cake bars.

I spread some pineapple preserves over the dough that was in the pan already. Then I sprinkled on walnuts and coconut. To get this gooey bar, you will use an entire can of sweetened condensed milk. It bakes down into all the layers to create one glorious bar. The carrot cake M&M's get added to the top right before going in the oven.

These carrot cake magic bars are quite sweet, so I would recommend cutting them into little squares. I actually cut each of these bars in the pictures into 4 smaller bite sized pieces after I took pictures. Of course that didn't stop me from eating 4 of them at one time. So much for trying to be better at portion control.

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