Combine the dough ingredients. Cream together butter, sugar, and cream cheese, followed by the egg and vanilla. Next, slowly add your dry ingredients and mix until combined.
Fill the pan. Press the sugar cookie dough into a foil-lined jelly roll pan. Bake. Bake the cookie bars at 350ºF for 20 minutes, just until the edges are a little golden. Let the bars cool completely before frosting and decorating.
Why You’ll Love These Frosted Sugar Cookie BarsRecipe IngredientsHow to Make Sugar Cookie BarsDecorating Sugar Cookie BarsHelpful TipsEasy Variation IdeasHow to Store Frosted Sugar Cookie BarsMore Cookie Bar RecipesGet the Recipe
Quick. If you’re big on baking but not big on time, sugar cookie bars are the answer. Have your cookie bars ready in 30 minutes or less, without chilling or rolling out the dough. Soft and chewy. If you love soft sugar cookies (like the Lofthouse cookies of supermarket fame) wait until you taste these homemade frosted sugar cookie bars. Rich, buttery, slathered with a thick layer of frosting, they’re completely irresistible. Holiday-worthy. Sugar cookie bars are easy to decorate for Christmas, Valentine’s Day, you name it. Change up the frosting color and add some sprinkles! This is one recipe you’ll want to save for every holiday and occasion.
Sugar – Classic sugar cookies call for good ol’ granulated white sugar. Butter – Salted or unsalted, brought to room temperature. Cream Cheese – Also at room temperature. I recommend using blocks of cream cheese rather than the spreadable kind. Egg Vanilla – For the best flavor, stick with real vanilla extract (as opposed to imitation vanilla). Flour Baking Powder and Baking Soda Frosting – I frost these bars with my favorite homemade buttercream frosting and top them with rainbow sprinkles.
Make the frosting. Whip up a quick batch of your favorite frosting. Feel free to color the frosting using gel food dyes. Frost the bars. Pile dollops of frosting onto your cookie bars. Use an offset spatula or a knife to spread the frosting evenly over top. Add sprinkles. Finish your bars with rainbow sprinkles, chocolate chips, or chocolate shavings.
Use room temperature ingredients. Make sure to take your butter and cream cheese (and even the egg) out of the fridge ahead of time. Room-temperature ingredients combine more easily with the other ingredients. Avoid overmixing. Mix the dry ingredients into the wet dough only until the dough is combined, and be careful to not overmix. Overly mixed cookie dough yields dense, tough cookie bars. Don’t overbake. The key to soft, chewy sugar cookie bars is to take the bars out of the oven while they’re still a tad underbaked. They should be just browned at the edges, and soft in the middle. The bars will continue to set up as they cool. Let the cookie bars cool. Speaking of cooling, give the bars enough time to cool off completely once they’re out of the oven. If the bars are still warm, the frosting will slide right off.
Flavoring – Add a few drops of flavoring extract, such as peppermint, almond, or orange extract. Chocolate – Borrow my soft chocolate sugar cookie dough and make bars instead. Funfetti – Add a handful of rainbow sprinkles to the cookie dough. I recommend using jimmies (the colorful rods) as opposed to nonpareils (the little balls) as jimmies won’t bleed color into the cookie dough. Candy – Fill your bars with chopped chocolate bars, white chocolate chips, or add M&Ms to make M&M cookie bars. For the holidays, make candy cane sugar cookie bars. Snickerdoodles – Try Snickerdoodle bars for an easy variation topped with cinnamon sugar.
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