White Chocolate Bliss Bars

Yum

As you know, we moved into a beautiful house a few months ago– a house with a huge yard, beautiful, sunny rooms, and loads of space for dreaming.  The longer we live here, the more I discover another quiet perk of this house– we have amazing neighbors, too! 🙂  So when I found out that our new neighbors were white chocolate fiends, I set out to make them a “thanks for helping us move in!” gift.  If there is a white chocolate lover in your family, you should treat them to these little beauties, today.  You will never find a recipe that is easier to make, or more impressive and pretty on a cookie plate! 🙂

What are we waiting for?  Let’s do this!

White Chocolate Bliss Bars

(Recipe originally from Just So Tasty.  Adaptations, steps, and photos are my own)

Ingredients:

1 1/2 sticks softened butter or margarine

1 cup white chocolate chips

3/4 cup white sugar

1 tsp. vanilla

1/4 tsp. salt

2 eggs, room temperature

1 1/4 all purpose flour

Extra chocolate and white chocolate chips for drizzling, optional

Directions:

Melt butter and white chocolate chips together in the microwave in 20 second increments, stirring after each heat.  When white chocolate is just melted, whisk in the sugar, then the vanilla and salt.  Beat eggs in a separate bowl and, whisking the entire time, gradually drizzle them into sugar/white chocolate mixture.  Fold in flour and pour into foil-lined, greased 8×8 pan.  Bake at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes, or until center passes the toothpick test and edges are golden brown and slightly pulled away from the edge (you may need to cover with foil toward the end of baking to keep the edges from becoming too brown before the center is done).  Allow to cool completely in the refrigerator before removing foil and cutting bars with a sharp knife. Drizzle with extra melted chocolate and white chocolate, if desired.

Now, in pictures! 🙂

First of all, let me apologize for the weird, alien-esque yellow glow on these “step by step” photos.  Because I am a busy Mom, that means that 90% of what I cook and bake is accomplished with kids hanging off my legs yelling “MOMMMMEEEEEEEEE I’m HUNGRYYYYYY!!!!  Stop taking pictures so we can EATTTTTTTTTT!!!!!”  Therefore, I take a few “glamor shots” of the food looking its best, but the step by step ones are taken with my iphone, with floury hands, under the grim yellow light of my kitchen.  So please forgive me.  I am a real cook in a real kitchen with real messes, and I really do my own real dishes and clean up my own mess afterward (such a tragedy that the mess is real!  haha!).  So bear with me.  😉

The great part about this recipe is that you can use the MICROWAVE to cook!  Yessssss.  When heating chocolate in the microwave, you want to heat in short bursts, stirring after each heating segment, even if it doesn’t seem like the chocolate needs to be stirred.

In this way, heat your butter and white chocolate, stirring every 20 seconds until your white chocolate is just melted.

The mixture won’t be completely uniform– there will still be kind of swirls of soft white chocolate in there, but that’s OK.  It just needs to be melted enough that you can stir without any hard pieces of chocolate.

Next whisk in your white sugar, and then your vanilla and salt.

I want to offer a word of caution about this next part.  Anytime you add raw eggs to a mixture that is hot, you run the risk of kind of “scrambling” the eggs if you’re not careful.  To avoid turning your gorgeous mixture into scrambled eggs, you can either temper the eggs (add a little bit of the warm mixture into the eggs and whisk them before combining), or super slowly drizzle your beaten eggs into the white chocolate mixture, whisking the entire time.  This last method is how I did it.  Keep whisking the entire time so that the egg is instantly incorporated into your mixture and doesn’t have a chance to get overheated.

When your eggs have been added, go ahead and fold in your flour.

Now let me teach you a little trick.  Anytime you make bars that need to be cut, you get a much cleaner and easier cut by baking them in a foil-lined (and then sprayed with cooking spray) pan.  This way, when the bars are finished baking and cooled, you can just lift out the entire sheet, press the foil flat, and cut the bars on a cutting board without trying to scrape them out of the pan without getting them all messed up.  You’re welcome.

Bake your bars at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes, or until the edges are golden brown (and pull away just slightly from the sides of the foil), and the center passes the toothpick test.  I had to cover mine the last 10 minutes or so with foil, so that the center got done without getting the sides and top too brown.

Once the bars pass the “toothpick test” in the center, take them from the oven and let them cool, completely.  I let the cookies cool a little to room temperature, and then chill them in the fridge because it makes them easier to cut.

When the bars are completely chilled, use that nifty little foil overhang you made (You smarty, you!) to lift them out of the pan.  Fold back the foil and cut the bars on a cutting board.  If you want to, melt some regular semi-sweet chocolate chips and some white chocolate chips, and drizzle the tops of the bars with the melted chocolate.  I like to use these simple decorating tips here to drizzle my chocolate.  Normally I just advocate “making what you have work” so you don’t have to spend extra money, but I think it’s worth 3 bucks for decorating tips that you can use again and again to get chocolate drizzle this PURDY.  😀

Let the bars chill a little bit longer so that the chocolate drizzle has a chance to harden.  Tell the bars to CHILLLLLLL . . .

At that point, you can stack the bars between layers of parchment paper, and take some to a friend or neighbor.  My new neighbors happen to be white chocolate lovers, so I took some of these White Chocolate Bliss Bars over there for them.  Cookies are for sharing.  And chocolate desserts are just MADE for sharing, because they bring a smile to everyone! 🙂  So go ahead– make some smiles, today!  I know this world can never have too many of those 🙂

You did it.  And I’m just so proud of you.

 

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