Whoa, whoa, whoa, you guys. We just discovered the gorgeousness that is cake mix cookie bars and our minds were blown. Have you tried this confection before? Essentially, it’s taking a store-bought cake mix and turning it into a cookie dough that’s then stuffed with an ooey-gooey filling – sign us up! While a yellow or even chocolate cake mix could work here, we kept it simple and classic with a white cake mix that we pepped up with vanilla extract. Once that’s mixed, the “cookie dough” is divided in half and one half is pressed into a 9×13 baking dish, and then it’s all about the filling….

While just about any combination of baking chips would work, our filling is all about semi-sweet chocolate chips mixed with butterscotch chips. If white chocolate, dark chocolate or peanut butter chips are speaking to you more, go with those, but man, this combo amazing as is. And don’t even get us started on how great it is to bite into these bars and have the filling be the most amazing balance of gooey and chewy – absolute perfection.

But we got ahead of ourselves a bit: the chocolate chips and butterscotch chips get melted together with butter, then we stirred in a can of sweetened condensed milk which adds just the right amount of creaminess, plus helps it thicken and set in a way that we’re completely in love with. Pour the filling over the cake/cookie dough base, top it off with the remaining dough, and get the whole thing in the oven!

Once these come out, you’re going to want to let them cool for a while so the filling can set. We love a slightly molten filling, but you don’t want this escaping from the bars, and letting them set fully is definitely the way to go. Once chilled, slice and divvy ‘em up – people go nuts every time and you’ll understand why once you try them!