I’m in love with a dessert. This dessert. I know, it shouldn’t happen, especially to a gal who doesn’t try her desserts, but…well, I can’t help loving this recipe. For starters, it has coffee. In multiple forms. In my book, coffee=awesome. A dessert recipe with coffee? Double awesome.
Then there’s the matter of how absolutely quick these are to make. The first time I made these, I stuck them in the oven and looked at the clock in amazement. The entire thing had taken just minutes from start to finish! I mentally swore off every other kind of cookie besides for bars, then, because I am crazy that way, I set out to make super complicated cookies. Because making such an easy recipe was like, a bonus hour or something.
There is one catch. These bars are pretty difficult to classify. The ingredients are fairly similar to that of chocolate chip-type cookies, but the texture of the end result is a lot closer to a brownie. My coworkers and I were disagreeing wholeheartedly on the matter, until we came to an amicable compromise. “Do you have any more of those delicious fudgey mocha things?”
Call them brownies, call them cookie bars, I just call them awesome.
Mocha Chocolate Chip Bars:
Slightly based on a recipe from recipegirl.com
Ingredients:
1/2 cup chocolate chips, melted and slightly cooled
2 2/3 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 Tablespoon instant coffee powder
1 cup butter or margarine
1 cup packed light brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 Tablespoons coffee liqueur
2 cups chocolate chips, some reserved for sprinkling
white chocolate, melted, for decorating (optional)
Instructions:
Preheat oven to 375. Line a 9×13 inch baking pan with parchment paper.
Whisk together flour, baking soda, salt and coffee powder. Set aside.
In the bowl of an electric mixer, cream together the butter and sugars until creamy and well combined. Add the eggs, vanilla and coffee liqueur, beating well after each addition. Add the melted chocolate and beat to combine.
Stir the flour mixture into the wet ingredients, stirring only until just combined. Stir in the chocolate chips.
Spread dough into prepared pan. Dough will be thick and may be hard to spread. The best way to spread it evenly is to wet your hands and use your hands to flatten the dough. Sprinkle reserved chocolate chips over dough.
Bake at 375 for 40 minutes, or until set. Allow to cool completely.
For optional white chocolate drizzle: Spoon melted white chocolate into a ziplock bag. Cut a tiny hole in the corner and pipe the chocolate over the cooled bar before cutting.
Cut bars into squares, kiss your diet goodbye, and enjoy!
Thanks for stopping by!
-Miriam
Sharing this at Sweets For a Saturday
One word to describe these: YUMMMMM
They look chewy and delicious and the coffee in them…perfect!
mine were dry, what did i do wrong??
Hi Shuly,
I’m sorry to hear they came out dry. Did you bake them too long? Did you leave out any of the ingredients? If you email me overtimecook at gmail I can try to help you figure out the problem.
Miriam
I bet those bars were eaten up in no time flat. I have a sweet treat linky party going on at my blog till Monday night and I’d love it if you’d come by and link your bars up. http://sweet-as-sugar-cookies.blogspot.com/2012/01/sweets-for-saturday-51.html
These are heaven!!! Just baked these last night and already almost half the pan is gone!
Look yummmm
can’t wait to try them!
Can I use chocolate liquor instead of coffee?
That should be fine!
These look delish!!! Can I sub the butter/ margarine for oil instead?
Good question. Did anyone ever try to sub oil instead of margarine for this? and how did it come out?
I swapped the margarine w coconut oil and it was awesome!! Equal sub.
I don’t have coffee liquor should i leave out or replace with something else?
Replace it with either chocolate liquor or more coffee.
What is coffee powder?
If I don’t have it, how can I go about using instant coffee granules?
Thanks.
It is instant.
Don’t you need to liquefy it with hot water before adding it in to the mixture?
(that’s what I ended up doing since I hadn’t heard back from you. I poured approx. 1 tsp. boiling water over the granules to dissolve them and it worked out just fine BH.)
The brownies were great, though I’d skip the salt next time around and maybe up the coffee a bit for stronger flavor.
Thanks for all these fabulous recipes. A friend recently led me to your site and I’ve been enjoying ever since.
Hi, I recently tried this recipe based on it’s fabulous reviews. Despite following the recipe perfectly it came out terribly dry! I’ve been thinking about where I went wrong…I baked it in a real metal 9×13 and not disposable, so do you think it needed less baking time? Which type of pan did you use?
In general, I noticed that many of your baked goods call for 375 temp vs 350, do you have a reason for that?
thank you for all your amazing recipes!