Salted Caramel Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars
Salted Caramel Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars combine the rich flavors of caramel and chocolate into a convenient cookie bar form! Featuring luscious chocolate chips and a homemade caramel sauce that is a total dream!
Why We Love This Caramel Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars Recipe
There are treats you make on rare special occasions. Then some treats are so comforting they end up being family favorites that are replicated month after month, and year after year.
Salted Caramel Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars are the latter treat variety.
Sticky chocolate chip bars oozing with thick buttery caramel filling… These cookie bars scream family game night, movie night, or any other kind of cozy night you want to share with people you love.
Caramel chocolate chip cookie bars have layers of chewy chocolate chip cookie dough with a gooey, creamy caramel in the middle that is so easy to whip up!
This recipe came from a cookbook my friend Shelly Jaronsky wrote called The Cookies & Cups Cookbook, named after her wildly popular dessert blog.
Ingredients You Need
- Butter – unsalted and softened to room temperature
- Brown Sugar – packed
- Sugar – granulated sugar
- Eggs – large and room temperature
- Vanilla – adds extra flavor
- Salt – balances out the flavors
- Baking Soda – to help them lift in the oven
- All-Purpose Flour – or a gluten-free replacement flour
- Chocolate Chips – semi-sweet chocolate chips
- Sweetened Condensed Milk – to make the caramel creamier
- Soft Caramels – an easy way to add caramel to cookies
- Flaked Sea Salt – for added flavor and texture
How to Make Salted Caramel Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line a 9×13-inch baking pan with foil and liberally coat it with nonstick cooking spray.
In the bowl of an electric mixer or a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the softened butter with both sugars until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Add the eggs, vanilla, salt, and baking soda. Mix well, then scrape the sides of the bowl with a spatula.
Turn the speed to low and add the flour. Beat to combine, then mix in the chocolate chips.
Press half of the cookie dough into the bottom of the prepared baking dish.
In a medium saucepan, add the sweetened condensed milk and unwrapped caramels. Set over medium-low heat and stir until the caramels melt, making a smooth caramel filling. Pour the caramel layer over the cookie dough base.
Drop the remaining dough over the caramel filling in small teaspoon-sized clumps. Bake the bars for 25-30 minutes, until the center is just set and the edges are golden brown.
Sprinkle with sea salt flakes and allow the cookie bars to cool completely. Then lift the bars out of the pan by the edges of the foil and cut. Store in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 3 days.
Tips & Tricks
- Don’t over mix the batter! Once the cookie batter has flour in it, it will start to build gluten. You don’t want the batter to build too much gluten or else the cookies will end up tough instead of chewy and moist!
- To most efficiently press the chocolate chip cookie dough into the baking dish, try coating your fingers in flour! This will help prevent the cookie dough from sticking to your hands.
- Don’t sprinkle the top with table salt! The top should be sprinkled with a flaky, coarse salt like sea salt or kosher salt. If you don’t have flaky salt, simply skip the salt on the top.
- Serve with a scoop of vanilla ice cream or a dollop of whipped cream on top!
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes! To make these gluten-free, replace the flour with a gluten-free replacement flour that is a 1 to 1 ratio!
Definitely. Allow the salted caramel chocolate chip cookie bars to cool to room temperature, then freeze in an airtight freezer container or a zip freezer bag. Freeze for up to 3 months, then thaw before eating.
Since we want the edges to be set, but the center to be slightly soft and chewy, the bars will naturally sink in the middle a little bit! It is totally normal.
Store any leftover caramel cookie bars in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 4 days! If you have lots of them, feel free to freeze them!
Check the Recipe Card Below for Instructions on How to Make Salted Caramel Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars + Video!
Looking for more cookie & bar recipes? Try out some of your favorites:
- Blueberry White Chocolate Blondies
- Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Bars
- Bailey’s Irish Cream Coffee Bars
- Oatmeal Fudge Bars
- Gooey Blueberry Cookie Bars
- Potato Chip Cookie Bars
Salted Caramel Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars
Ingredients
- 1 cup unsalted butter, softened
- 1 cup packed light brown sugar
- 1/2 cup granulated sugar
- 2 large eggs
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 2 cups semisweet chocolate chips
- 14 ounces sweetened condensed milk
- 10 ounces soft caramels, unwrapped
- 1 teaspoon flaked sea salt
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line a 9×13-inch baking dish with foil and liberally coat with nonstick cooking spray.
- In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat the softened butter with both sugars until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Add the eggs, vanilla, salt, and baking soda. Mix well, then scrape the sides of the bowl with a spatula.
- Turn the speed to low and add the flour. Beat to combine, then mix in the chocolate chips.
- Press half of the cookie dough into the bottom of the prepared baking dish.
- In a medium sauce pot, add the sweetened condensed milk and unwrapped caramels. Set over medium-low heat and stir until the caramels melt, making a smooth caramel filling. Pour the filling over the cookie dough base.
- Drop the remaining cookie dough over the caramel filling in small teaspoons-sized clumps. Bake the bars for 25-30 minutes, until the center is just set.
- Sprinkle with sea salt flakes and allow the bars to cool completely. Then lift the bars out of the pan by the edges of the foil and cut. Store in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 3 days.
Video
Notes
Nutrition
Recipe from The Cookies & Cups Cookbook by Cookies and Cups.
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I love these cookies! So does my entire family, sisters and friends. However, they never come out exactly like your pictures. My dough is very sticky and hard to work with. I follow the recipe to the letter. I have the hardest time spreading the dough in the pan. It’s so sticky that it moves and pulls apart and sticks on my fingers or spatula on spoon, no matter what I use and I have to keep adding dough to the pan. I use over half of the batter, probably three quarters, then I don’t have enough batter to drop on the top. They still come out delicious, but they don’t look anything like yours. I commented a few years ago but you never got back to me. is anyone else having this problem? If you are please respond. I’ve been making these for about 6 to 7 years and my batter is always sticky and shiny and it drives me crazy! I think next time I’ll just use a regular chocolate chip cookie recipe.
Damn these squares are some good. It’s 02:00 in the morning and I just got up from a deep sleep to have me second square. I made them at 9:00 pm just before bed and had my first square before they had fully cooked.
I just wanted to say THANK YOU. You provide a free recipe of gooey goodness and so many of the comments are unkind, accusatory or down right rude.
I’ve made these several times, I am not a pro, and they come out perfectly just as written.
So god bless your patience and kindness for the masses. I appreciate your gift of an amazing recipe!
your article was so amazing , i like to read it . and really inspiring recipe , i would follow it soon .. Thankyou so much
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great recipy. i’ll try it out.
Excellent recipe… I made them for my husband’s beekeeping club. I easily got 30+ “bites” to serve – they are very rich so a little goes a long way. Thank you!
*Note: I weighed the flour and used 300 grams and also used Werther’s chewy caramels. The cookie part was perfectly soft and the caramel was not runny.
Also, I used parchment paper instead of foil. I sprayed the pan lightly with non-stick cooking spray then lined with pre-cut parchment. When they cooled, I lifted them out of the pan, flipped them over to peel the parchment paper off and flipped them back over to cut.
Gathered the ingredients over the day, started them at 3:am, so wasn’t going to get fancy. Can’t handle the super sweets, so I always gear the sugar down & often reduce fat to achieve a balance and enjoyability. Cut the sugar down – 3/4 brown, 1/4 white. Cut the fat down to 3/4 cup, melted. Pressed bottom layer into lasagna pan lined with parchment, with the silicone spatula used to mix dough with no difficulties – melted butter may have helped this be easy to do this way. Dumped on caramel sauce layer & spread to coat bottom layer. Topped with remaining dough, dabbed off end of spatula spoon with a butter knife tip with no issues. Baked for 40 minutes. Came out golden brown & exactly like the picture. Set perfectly, cooled on stovetop for 8 hours, covered mostly to avoid dryout. Cut, held, baked and served perfect across the board. Easy enough to make at 3:am, half asleep, and still come out great. No need to hassle with using your hands to touch greasy dough or pre-bake bottom layer. Thank you for this recipe!
I always like a couple bites of a little sweet after a meal but have super low sugar threshhold. Cut this up after cooling into 1″ x 2″ mini bites and they’re perfect. Good Balance! Cutting down the fat & sugar made them slightly chewy (not too greasy or sweet for my preferences) and ideal. Yes! They are addictive anyway. I used organic ingredients. Have been looking for a finishing sweet (after meals) to replace chocolate – due to it being loaded with lead, cadmium, etc.* – I stopped eating after a meal, and this recipe is “IT.” A thousand thank you’s! These throw together supremely easily if you need a showstopper but are exhausted (like the holidays). Would probably be good with mixed chips – peanut butter, white choc, etc. and even a white choc & dried cranberries or cherries for the holidays.
* See Toxic Chocolate article at Asyousow.org
Additional to my original Comment on this recipe:
After eating these for a week (a 1″ x 2″ piece after main meal), and having already reduced the sugars from the original recipe (in my original Comment), these are still incredibly, incredibly sweet. Wondering why, and for health interest, I looked up the sweetened, condensed milk used in the caramel step and found this:
(1) 14-ounce can of sweetened condensed milk, per their own labels, contains –
*22g Sugar
*130 calories
*Contains a bioengineered food ingredient
To make it yourself, you would need to add 1.5 Cups of Sugar to milk. Then add that to the ‘almost pure sugar itself’ caramel for the recipe. Not everyone (or their health) can handle that much sugar.
Next time, I will use a smaller amount of Evaporated Milk (no added sugars) to thin the caramel to a pourable layer. I may also try doing this with Coconut Cream (at Trader Joe’s – NOT Cream of Coconut, for cocktails, as it has sugar added) instead of milk, or subbing the caramel layer entirely for a Nutella layer (thinned with the subs) in between and a drizzle of regular caramel sauce, such as is used for ice cream, at serving time, while also reducing the sugar in the recipe to 1/2 cup brown & 1/4 cup granulated to achieve a less sweet overall result that is enjoyable and satisfying without the overwhelming sweetness (some of us experience). Some have used 25 caramels & 2 Tbsp water (cream/substitute?) & butter to get that pourability. These offer healthier options, but still a “treat.” Still a great base recipe, can sub the chips for toasted nuts, raw coconut, etc. Would love to see a Samoa cookie version of these bars!
***Thank you for publishing these additionals, so those of us seeking healthier options can still enjoy your fine recipes!***
Love the recipe made for Christmas. Then made for a Birthday party on request. But I add pecans on bottom layer then Carmel and rest of cookie dough on top .
These were too sweet for me, but my family loved them. I’d half the caramel layer next time. Used GF flour 1:1 and chilled the bottom layer before adding the caramel and second layer. Baked an extra 10 minutes. Came out just fine and plenty left over which I will freeze for another day.
Hi Meem,
See my Comment/Review for substitutes & suggestions I made to dial the sugar down on this great recipe. The sweetened condensed milk (@ 1.5 cups of sugar per can) then added to the massively sugary caramel in the recipe makes this layer very sweet. For health & a much lower sugar profile – while still making them a treat – you can try the mods and see if they work for you. Organic ingredients also help! When you tweak this recipe til it’s right for you, it’s a keeper that is infinitely adaptable to what you want to include (sub for chips, etc.)
From Angelil — See comment in my original post 1/20/24 & 1/23/24 for healthier and/or less sweet options and subs.
I made this recipe over New Year’s weekend for a family gathering, and it was such a hit! Everyone loved it so much I now have a request to bake three more batches for a friend. I call that a winning recipe!
Omg