M&M Bars from Pinterest

Nancy is a Pinterest user.  I am not, but I'll be honest and admit that I am fascinated by many of the things that I have seen on Pinterest, and I'm grateful that Pinterest has contributed so many readers to this blog.

Nancy has been hinting that she wanted me to try a recipe for M&M bars that she found on Pinterest for a couple of weeks now.  She bought a bag of M&M's at Fareway, but alas, we ate them before we managed to get the bars made.  Oops.  Don't you hate it when that happens?  I'm embarrassed to admit that this "accident" happens too frequently around here.  Anyway, I finally got around to baking them last night, and they turned out to be delicious.

You can access them by going here: http://fantasticfamilyfavorites.blogspot.com/2011/06/thick-and-chewy-m-cookie-bars.html

This picture of the bars is from the Fantastic Family Favorites Blogspot. 
Ours looked exactly like these except that we used pastel Easter M&Ms.



Naturally, the reason that I am posting them on this blog is because I think they are a good wood cookstove recipe.  First, the recipe says to melt the butter and then let it partially cool, and you know how I like recipes that take advantage of the cookstove's heat as the oven reaches the appropriate temperature.  We melted the butter for these bars by putting it in a metal mixing bowl atop the reservoir.  Our butter was at room temperature, and we just let it partially melt; it worked beautifully.

We have been experiencing a wonderful spring storm here for the last two days which has delivered us a much needed, gentle, soaking rain.  We are very thankful for that, but it does make trips to the woodshed less pleasant, so I didn't have the normal variety of firewood sizes in the house last night that I like to have on hand for baking.  This brings me to the next reason that these bars are a good wood cookstove recipe.  They are supposed to be baked for 24-28 minutes at 325.  I ended up baking them for closer to 35 minutes at about 300, and they still turned out exactly like the picture above.  I'm sure that one could not bake them at a high temperature for a short time and get the same results, but I do think that they are pretty forgiving of an imprecise oven temperature.

Usually, I always make new recipes exactly the way they are written the first time.  However, with this one, I did not put all of the dry ingredients together separately like the recipe says.  I used Meme's method of mixing cookie dough which is to cream the fat and sugars, then add the eggs.  Next, beat in the soda and vanilla.  Add the flour and candies last.  I like this method because it works well for cookies, and I have one less dirty bowl at the end of the mixing process.

Also, we just lightly greased the 9x13 pan that we used rather than lining it with foil.  As near as I can tell, lining a pan with foil for a recipe like this is just intended to make cleanup easier.  Since I am a raging skinflint, I can't see wasting a foot and a half of tin foil when the bars don't stick badly anyway.

Next time I make these, I will omit the salt.  I don't think that it is necessary, and my blood pressure doesn't either.  The salt in the butter is sufficient.

Beware.  These will disappear fast!