I’m partnering with Bob’s Red Mill® to bring you today’s recipe! I absolutely love all of their products and use them every day. Bob’s Red Mill products are so perfect for baking!
During my junior year of high school, one of my close guy friends planned a special Valentine’s Day date for his girlfriend. Since I knew her really well, he shared his thoughts with me ahead of time to double check she’d appreciate his surprises: a bouquet of red roses, a dainty gold necklace, and a giant cookie cake from Mrs. Field’s.
I immediately reassured him that she’d love all of them, so around midday on Valentine’s Day, I headed over to the mall with him to pick up the special dessert. When we walked up to the bakery’s register, someone brought out a huge red box from the back and flipped open the lid to show us his customized treat.
They had scripted “I love you” along with her name across the center of the massive cookie cake in red icing, piped white frosting ruffles around the edge, and sprinkled the border with teeny heart-shaped sprinkles. I looked at my friend and smiled, quickly telling him that she would absolutely adore his sweet cookie cake gesture.
As we carried it back to his truck, he mentioned that he had a tough time picking out the cookie flavor. He debated between plain chocolate chip and peanut butter with chocolate chunks, but in the end, he thought the simplest option would be best.
I nodded my head in agreement. Classic flavors always taste delicious, especially when they’re as soft and chewy and gooey as that oversized store-bought cookie…
But I still secretly wondered how the peanut butter version would’ve turned out.
The other thing I thought about that afternoon? How smart it was to bake cookie dough in a cake pan! Up to that point in my life, I had always assumed homemade cookie dough needed to be prepared exactly as cookbook recipes instructed, as individual mounds of dough on the baking sheet… And a single massive cookie, like the one he had custom ordered, could only be made by fancy bakeries.
Yet when I considered how much easier it’d be to skip shaping individual cookies from homemade dough, I decided to try baking my own jumbo chocolate chip cookie in a cake pan back at my own house. I used the ingredients list from an older cookbook on our shelf, and although it wasn’t one bit healthy, that big cookie still tasted delicious, especially the center squares… Those slices were so ooey, gooey, and massively chewy—exactly the way I love my cookies!
And now, far too many years later, I finally created a healthier version: these Healthy One-Bowl Flourless Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Cookie Bars! They’re incredibly soft and chewy with lots of sweet peanut flavor and rich chocolate morsels. They’re also really easy to make—no mixer required!
Unlike the store-bought version, these healthy cookie bars contain no eggs, dairy, butter, oil or refined sugar… And they’re just 92 calories!
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