Grandma’s Easy Toffee Bars Recipe

Easy Toffee Bars have a buttery brown sugar shortbread crust topped with melted chocolate, butterscotch chips and toffee bits. An easy dessert recipe perfect for the holiday season!

Easy Toffee Bar Recipe

If you need an easy fall dessert, Thanksgiving dessert or bar cookie for a Christmas holiday cookie party, these Toffee Bars are for you!

They have a melt-in-your-mouth shortbread base topped with a layer of smooth semi sweet chocolate, butterscotch morsels and crunchy toffee bits, and they are absolutely delicious!

I found this easy recipe for toffee bars in my grandma’s old recipe collection. I hadn’t had them in ages, but I remember really enjoying them (probably a little too much) around Thanksgiving and Christmas! Actually, you can enjoy these anytime!

To be clear, these are not toffee bars with sweetened condensed milk or Saltine toffee bars made with crackers. They’re more of a cookie bar topped with melted chocolate.

Ingredients

You only need a few simple ingredients for chocolate toffee bars. They should be easy to find in your grocery store. Full amounts are in the printable recipe card below.

• Butter — I use salted softened butter at room temperature, but unsalted is fine.
• Brown sugar
• Egg yolk
• Vanilla extract
• Flour — all purpose flour
• Salt
• Semi-sweet chocolate chips — to top the bars. I prefer semi sweet chocolate to balance out the sweetness, but milk chocolate chips also work.
• Butterscotch morsels — for the topping
• Heath bars — or chopped toffee candy or toffee bits

How to Make Toffee Bars with a Shortbread Crust

First, take your butter out of the fridge to soften up a little. It makes it much easier to work with!

Then, cream butter with the brown sugar and an egg yolk in a large bowl. Mix in the vanilla, flour and salt until it’s well combined. The dough will be very stiff, but this is normal.

Parchment paper isn’t absolutely necessary, but it makes it so much easier to lift the bars out of the pan for slicing. Less mess, too!

Press the dough into the pan so it covers the bottom. It might go up on the sides a little, which is fine.

Baking Time

Bake for 18 to 20 minutes or until the crust is a light golden brown. Don’t over bake! Sprinkle chocolate chips over the crust, and pop the pan back into the oven for about a minute or just until the chips start to melt.

Use a spatula or offset spatula to spread that lovely melted chocolate over the crust. Then, let it cool slightly, and sprinkle your butterscotch morsels and some crushed toffee chips over the chocolate.

If you can’t find packaged toffee bits, just smash up a couple of Heath Bars. You might want to save a couple if your kids get any Heath Bars on Halloween!

How to Store Toffee Cookie Bars

Store the bars in an airtight container for 4-5 days. You can leave them at room temperature or in the refrigerator if your house is warm. Freeze the bars wrapped in plastic wrap and aluminum foil for up to 3 months.

Helpful Tips

I recommend lining the baking dish with parchment paper or aluminum foil as it is much easier to remove the bars for easy slicing. Lightly spray the baking pan with cooking spray so the parchment paper fits tightly in the pan.

Allow the bars to cool completely at room temperature before scoring. If you are freezing the bars, slice them up first, and then wrap them.

You can use any toffee candy to top the bars. Crushed peanuts or pecans are also good on these. You can leave out the butterscotch chips to tone down the sweetness.

More Easy Cookie Bar Recipes

If you love bar cookies, try my Best Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars or cake mix cookie bars or Grandma’s lemon bars. Or browse even more easy dessert recipes your family will love!

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Recipe published in 2019 and updated in 2023.