These little trashed up shortbread cookie bars are just AMAZING, and they’re a great way to use up leftover Halloween candy! Buttery shortbread cookie bars laden with candy bits make for one amazing treat!
These trashed up shortbread cookie bars that use leftover Halloween candy were originally posted celebrating the fabulous Jessica Merchant of How Sweet Eats for her virtual baby shower in 2014. Wow how time flies! She is now preggo with her second baby and after making these following my first Halloween with a Ben this year, I thought it only fitting to reshare these and update the post (I’ve made these bars coutless times over the years, they’re always a hit at parties)!
How was your Halloween? As you might have seen on my Instagram, Ben was a little skunk. But, ummm….he hated being in his costume lol. He literally had a full on meltdown with tears every time we put him in it lol. Nick even tried “no crying when we’re flying” which was the cutest thing ever. He still cried. Next year he might enjoy being dressed up?
Ok, so these shortbread cookie bars come from having about a million and one pieces of left over Halloween candy. Why do I have so much left over Halloween candy? Because my husband is a giant softie when it comes to buying candy for trick-or-treaters.
He goes overboard to say the least. Like suuuuuper overboard. I distinctly remember the conversation: Me ‘honey, we don’t need a shopping cart for one bag of Halloween candy’ My Hubby ‘yes we do, we need at least 5 bags so we don’t run out.’ I just rolled my eyes and went with it, hey, I didn’t want to be the Grinch that stole Halloween.
We didn’t get as many trick-or-treaters as we did in our old neighborhood, so I was stuck with all this leftover candy lol (we used to get hundreds – I’d say about 400-500 kids and we’d run out of candy every year, this year we only got about 100, so yeah, tons of leftover candy.)
In all honesty, there’s only SO MUCH Halloween one can eat without getting sick of it, right?
So I set out to baking these little beauties, they are perfect for using all that left over Halloween candy!
I had been staring at the empty candy wrappers and said to my hubby ‘I should call these candy trash shortbread cookie bars’ and it was his turn to laugh.
You’ll want to cut the bars right after they come out of the oven, then you’ll frost them:
Then you’ll let them cool, sprinkle a little sanding sugar on them and bring them to a party or baby shower. Another cool thing about these trashed up shortbread bars is that they keep very well for a few days, so if you need to make them ahead of time, go for it and just store them in an air tight container.
Trashed Up Shortbread Cookie Bars (that use leftover Halloween candy)
Ingredients
Instructions
Note: This recipe has been made by a reader and featured on my Reader Recreation page. If you ever make a SweetPhi blog recipe that you’d like to share, just include the hashtag #Sweetphiblog on social media or send me an email to sweetphiblog@gmail.com, I love seeing your recreations!
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WOW!!! This is just fantastic!!!
Thank you so much Amanda, truly appreciate the comment 🙂
Oh man, these are insane! Any time a cookie and a candy bar meet, beautiful things happen.
Haha, girl you’re so right…any time a cookie and a candy bar meet, beautiful things DO happen! I’m totally loling over here 🙂 Thanks for commenting!
You don’t want to run out of candy on Halloween 🙂
Haha, girl, with the amount of candy my hubby bought it will be months (and lots of batches of these) before I run out lol!
These look craaaazy good! I love that you put Reeses in there 🙂
Thanks! Reeses should go in every dessert, right?
Love these! I may have to stop eating all this leftover Halloween candy long enough to make some epic shortbread bars. Yum!
Ha, you’re so sweet! But seriously, this shortbread is absolutely the perfect way to eat leftover Halloween candy 🙂
Gah! These are my dream cookie!! Thanks so much for joining in for Jess’s shower!
You’re too sweet! Thank you so much for comment, and an even bigger thank you for setting it all up, what a fantastic event 🙂
Oh, these cookie bars are perfect for a holiday cookie exchange!
I’m sure anyone in a cookie exchange would be MORE than happy to receive these for a holiday cookie exchange..little bits of candy…yum! Thanks for commenting Sommer!
Any thoughts on how they would freeze?? Getting ready to make them now – Can’t wait to see how they turn out. Thanks for the recipe!
That’s a great question! I think they would freeze really well. I’d make sure that they were cool completely first and then freeze them and then just let them thaw before enjoying! I’ve frozen regular short bread bars before and they thawed great 🙂