Buttery-soft sugar cookie bars topped off with a sweet buttercream frosting and plenty of colorful sprinkles! These cookie bars make a great treat any time of the year, but they’re easily customizable with festive sprinkles for the holidays or special occasions!
One more cookie recipe for you before Christmas! Ok, these don’t quite look like traditional cookies, but these sugar cookie bars are just as good, and if you’ve been putting off your holiday cookie baking you’ll be relieved to hear that these are a total breeze to make. There’s no chilling, cutting, or rolling required (I’m looking at you, classic sugar cookies), no scooping or waiting for your cookie sheets to cool to drop another batch into the oven, just spread your sugar cookie bar dough into the pan, bake it, and top with this sweet, simple 4 ingredient frosting. And with sprinkles, of course.
If you’re still in holiday baking mode, these sugar cookie bars can totally be decorated with festive red and green sprinkles for Christmas or colorful confetti sprinkles for New Years.
Obviously I went with the confetti sprinkles here 😍
With their thick, chewy bases and their sweet buttercream frosting, these sugar cookie bars all but melt in your mouth.
To make the bases so soft, I add a small amount (2 oz) of cream cheese into the dough. This not only makes the cookie bar base extremely soft, but it also gives it a great flavor and helps keep them from being too sweet. Make sure to allow your cream cheese (and butter) soften to room temperature so that they’ll completely cream together when you go to combine them.
This sugar cookie bar dough will be thinner than your average cookie dough, but it’s still pretty thick and sticky and can be hard to spread into a parchment-lined baking pan. You can just grease and flour your pan, but I really love to use the parchment as it makes it so easy for me to just lift the sugar cookie bars out of the pan once they’re done cooling and I can easily decorate and slice them (plus pan cleanup is super easy that way, too!). For me, it’s worth the trouble of wrestling the dough over the parchment paper.
I topped these sugar cookie bars off with a very simple buttercream frosting. The frosting is just four ingredients — butter, sugar, vanilla, and a pinch of salt for added flavor.
I typically tend to find buttercream to be almost too sweet for me, so I keep the frosting layer pretty thin. Even then I liked to cut these sugar cookie bars into even smaller pieces than you see in the pictures, as they’re still fairly sweet.
It probably doesn’t help that I like to go totally overboard with the sprinkles, either…
Alright, well I have a ton of gift wrapping to do and not a whole lot of confidence that I can finish it in 3 days… so wish me luck, and I hope that you love these sugar cookie bars!
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Sugar Cookie Bars
Ingredients
Cookie Bars
- 1 cup unsalted butter, softened to room temperature (226g)
- 2 oz cream cheese softened (57g)
- 1 ¾ cup sugar (350g)
- 2 large eggs + 1 egg yolk
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 2 ½ cups all purpose flour (285g)
- ½ teaspoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon salt
Frosting
- ¾ cup unsalted butter, softened to room temperature (170g)
- 1 ½ cups powdered sugar (200g)
- ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- colored sprinkles for decorating (optional)
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350F (175C) and prepare a 13x9 pan by lining with parchment paper (or lightly grease and flour the pan). Set aside.
- Combine butter and cream cheese in the bowl of a stand mixer (or use a large bowl and an electric mixer). Beat together on medium-speed until well creamed (about 1 minute).
- Add sugar and gradually increase mixer speed to high, beating until well-combined and fluffy (about 1 minute).
- Add eggs and egg yolk, one at a time, stirring well between each addition. Scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl as needed to ensure ingredients are well-combined.
- Stir in vanilla extract.
- In a separate, medium-sized bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt.
- Gradually add dry ingredients to wet, stirring on medium-low speed until completely combined.
- Spread batter evenly into prepared pan and bake on 350F (175C) for 25-30 minutes or until center is set and edges are beginning to turn light golden brown.. Allow cookie bars to cool completely in pan before covering with frosting.
Frosting
- Place butter in a large bowl and beat with an electric mixer until cream.
- Gradually add sugar until completely combined.
- Stir in vanilla extract and salt, stir until well-combined.
- Spread over completely cooled sugar cookie bars. Decorate with sprinkles, cut into squares and serve.
Nutrition
Patty Hudson
Does the frosting set/dry? I want give as gifts and will need to individually wrap the bars.
Sam
Hi Patty! It’s like a stiffer buttercream, so it won’t set as firm as say a sugar cookie icing but it won’t smear. 🙂
Jessica
Making these now, in a dark nonstick brownie pan. I lowered the temp to 325. Fingers crossed!
Sam
I hope they turn out for you! You shouldn’t have to lower the oven temperature when using a dark pan though.
Sandy Palmer
I made these and they are so yummy. Make as directed, terrific cookies.
Sam
I am so glad you enjoyed it so much, Sandy! 🙂
Kristi
Hi, will this recipe work in a cookie sheet pan instead of a 9×13? Looking to make a sheet for cookie bars. Thanks.
Sam
Hi Kristi! They will be pretty thin but I don’t see any reason it wouldn’t work. 🙂
Marie-Claude
Thanks for great recipe! These turned out amazing, and they were super easy to make.
I did add a bit of cream cheese to the frosting. But other than that I followed the recipe to the T.
Sam
I am so glad you enjoyed them so much, Marie-Claude! 🙂
Sandra
How much cream cheese did you add? I’m guessing 1 or 2 oz.