Amazing Frosted Sugar Cookie Bars Recipe
The Best Sugar Cookie Bars Recipe!
These frosted sugar cookies bars are moist, buttery, chewy and delicious! Everything a sugar cookie bar should be. They also just look great with the pink frosting and sprinkles on top. If you do the same pink frosting, these make a great Valentine’s Day treat.
I haven’t tried all sugar cookie bar recipes out there, so I suppose it is risky to claim that these are the best. However, I did search out 4 promising recipes, make them all during one day, and taste test each in order to determine which I like the most. Do you ever get a little crazy like that? Well, now you don’t have to – with sugar cookie bars anyway…unless you really want to.
The Battle of the Recipes
That’s a lot of butter, right?! It is safe to say that my kitchen was a disaster area during and after this process. Making 4 recipes at the same time is a bit chaotic!
The neighbors sure seemed to enjoy the fruits of my labors though! (FYI – A few of them proclaimed that these cookie bars taste just like the Swig sugar cookie bars. I cannot personally confirm this since I have not had one before – which is a shame, I know.)
By the way, they were all pretty good cookie bars, but there was a clear winner in my opinion. Clear enough that I may never again try a new sugar cookie bars recipe. 😉
Ingredients & Tips for Sugar Cookie Bars
I like that this recipe includes a little bit of sour cream in the batter because it just always seems to make sugar cookies even better. If you love sugar cookies with a bit of almond extract in there, feel free to add that in too. Totally optional though – tastes great either way.
Use an electric mixer to beat the butter and sugar in the beginning, but then switch to a spoon or spatula to stir in the ingredients from that point on – as instructed in the recipe.
Transferring the Cookie Dough to a 9×13 Pan
The dough is soft and sticky. You will want to butter your hands, or something like that, to help keep them from sticking to the batter while you press it into the 9×13 pan.
Frosting the Sugar Cookie Bars
Go ahead and use your favorite buttercream frosting recipe on the cooled cookie bars. That’s what I did! Add food coloring, if desired. You can also add some toppings if you’d like, I used sprinkles but you could do M&M’s or something like that as well.
By the way, if you spread frosting quite a bit, you should invest in an angled spatula! It makes it so fast and easy to spread a nice, even layer. I love mine!
More of my favorite bar recipes:
- Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars
- Blueberry Sour Cream Bars
- Fudgy Chocolate Chip Bars
- Magic Cookie Bars
- Orange Vanilla Cheesecake Bars
- Cheesecake Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars
- Loaded M&M Oreo Blondies
- Pumpkin Cheesecake Bars
- Date Bars
- Caramel Apple Cheesecake Bars
- S’mores Cookie Bars
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The sugar cookie bar recipe is slightly adapted from Cooking Classy, and the frosting recipe is slightly adapted from Mel’s Kitchen Cafe.
Amazing Frosted Sugar Cookie Bars Recipe
Ingredients
- 2 ½ cups all-purpose flour 12 ounces
- ½ teaspoon baking powder
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 10 tablespoons unsalted butter softened to room temperature
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 1 egg
- 1 egg white
- 1 ½ tablespoons sour cream
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- ½ teaspoon almond extract optional
Buttercream Frosting
- 4 tablespoons butter softened to room temperature
- 1 ½ ounces cream cheese softened to room temperature
- ½ teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- 2 cups powdered sugar
- 2 tablespoons heavy cream or milk
- Food coloring and sprinkles optional
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 375°F/190°C. Line a 9x13 baking dish with foil and lightly spray foil with nonstick cooking spray.
- In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt.
- In a large bowl, beat the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy, about 3 or 4 minutes. Stir in the egg and egg white. Add sour cream, vanilla, and almond extract (if using) and mix until blended. Slowly add flour mixture and stir until combined. With buttered hands, gently press and pat the batter into the prepared pan.
- Bake for 15 to 17 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean and the bars are set. The bars will still be pale, but the edges may start to turn golden brown. Cool completely, then remove from pan, frost, and cut into squares.
- Frosting: In a medium bowl, beat the butter and cream cheese together until light and creamy, about 2 minutes. Mix in the vanilla. Add the powdered sugar gradually and mix on low speed after each addition, until well blended and creamy. Add the heavy cream and whip until frosting is light and fluffy.