Chocolate Chip Pecan Bar Cookies

These chocolate chip pecan cookies are the perfect combination of crunchy and chewy.

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Who doesn’t love a good chocolate chip cookie? I’m not always a fan of chocolate chip cookies being contaminated by nuts, but sometimes the cravings call for chocolate chip cookies with nuts.

For a second, before I dive into the inspiration behind these pecan chocolate chip cookie bars, I want to talk about something that’s been bothering me lately: people stealing bloggers’ photographs and claiming them as their own. There are entire sites filled with stolen content if you can believe it. Fortunately, those sites seem to regularly get shut down and slapped with hefty fines. As if that’s not irritating enough, we have a whole other type of content thief: the home baker who periodically sells their confections’ to friends and family. While nobody owns a design for a cake, cookie, or even cupcake, somebody does own the photograph you’ve stolen and claimed as your own.

I have a couple of acquaintances who do this all the time! Sometimes, to be snarky, I’ll ask for the link to the blog where the photo was from because that particular recipe looks tasty and I want to try it. Usually, they either remove the photo or block me from seeing the photo, or claim the photo as their own when we all know damn well it’s not. What’s so freaking hard about sharing a photo, crediting the original source and saying, “I just made this cake recipe and it’s delicious!”?

In a way, it makes me somewhat happy that I’m still learning about food styling and have been too cheap, I mean lazy, to upgrade my camera to something that will produce higher quality images. Yay for mediocrity!

Alright, with that mini rant out of the way, I can get back to these delicious pecan chocolate chip bar cookies. As I shared in my crunchy peanut butter cookie post, I’m sharing one cookie recipe a month for 2018 to honor my mother-in-law, and these bar cookies were one of her go-to recipes to feed a crowd. I think that’s the purpose of bar cookies; they’re easy to transport, and they’re perfect for a potluck, dinner party, or a casual afternoon bbq with friends.

In her original recipe, she used a mixture of pecans and walnuts—I’ve omitted the walnuts because I’m not a huge fan of chocolate chip cookies with walnuts in them. It’s just... unnatural to me to put two things together that I don’t enjoy together. Actually, that’s not entirely true because somewhere, hidden in my stash of recipes is a drop dead gorgeous chocolate tart that has walnuts in it. Walnuts and booze. mmmm

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Pecan Chocolate Chip Bars

by Rae Goldman February-28-2018

These are the perfect bar cookie to bring to a potluck.

Ingredients

2 3/4 cup, sifted all-purpose flour
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
12 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 1/3 cup, firmly packed dark brown sugar
3 large eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups, plus more for melting chocolate chips
1 1/4 cups, lightly toasted and chopped pecans

Instructions

Preheat over to 350º and grease a 9x13 inch baking pan.Sift together the baking powder, salt, and flour. Set aside.In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat the butter and brown sugar until light and fluffy, about 5 minutes. Add the eggs, one at a time. Add the vanilla, and reduce the speed on the mixer, and add the flour until just combined.Turn off the mixer and add the chocolate chips and pecans by hand.Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake until the top is lightly browned about 45 minutes.If desired, melt additional chocolate chips and drizzle over the bars. Allow the melted chocolate to set prior to serving.

Details

Prep time: 5 mins Cook time: 45 mins Total time: 2 hour 45 mins Yield: 16 cookies, depending on size cut

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