Sweet & Salty Monster Cookie Bars

This post is sponsored by my friends at MARS, but the thoughts and opinions here are all my own… just as always.  Plus, someone else having my thoughts is just weird.  🙂

Summer is nearly here and if you’re searching for a fun and easy recipe to take to all those warm weather picnics and barbecues, I’ve got one for ya!  These Sweet and Salty Monster Cookie Bars are just the ticket!  With chocolate chips, peanut butter chips, Peanut M&Ms, and crushed pretzels, they’re the perfect blend of sweet and salty – which y’all know I love!  And there’s just something about pretzels and chocolate?  Am I right??  Now add that to peanut M&Ms, peanut butter, and chewy cookie bars.  Seriously.  I’ll give you a minute to process through that…

Delicious, right!? And the new M&Ms in red, white, and blue make for the perfect way to add a little patriotic color to them! (Get a coupon here!)

And in classic Stacey fashion, they’re super easy!  It’s a matter of stir, stir, stir, pour, spread, bake!  🙂  Did y’all get that?  No worries.  I’ve got the full instructions below.

You know, I have such fond memories of cookie bars.  They’re such an easy way to make some delicious cookies without all the work.  My Mom has this one recipe for cookie bars that is super fantastic and super easy, too.  They were one of those things that she always took to barbecues and such and because they were so easy, they were a great after-school snack, too.  Goodness, I love those things.

Jack absolutely adores chocolate covered pretzels, so when he heard me talking about chocolate and pretzels, he started asking for these chocolate cover pretzels rods I make sometimes.  To appease him, I coated a few pretzel rods in chocolate almond bark and sprinkled them with some crushed peanut M&Ms.  Didn’t they turn out great?  The best part is they tasted even better than they looked!  I just had to add a picture of them in this post.  They’re such a fun and easy treat!  See there – you just got two recipes in one post!  🙂

The great thing about these too is that they can be a great base for your favorite candy mix-ins.  Any other M&Ms would work – peanut, almond, plain, peanut butter, etc.