Sometimes you want to treat your loved one (or yourself) to some homemade sweets but don’t want to spend tons of time in the kitchen.
This can particularly be true in the summer months when heating up the oven sounds like a major chore. But cookies are one dessert item that can often be made sans heat. These are great as party food recipes but just as sweet for a date night.
Here’s how to make some no-bake cookies, both of which have an end result that actually looks more impressive than a traditional cookie. Who said making dessert has to be hard?
No Bake Chocolate Cookie Bars
These bars are the perfect blend between bar and cookie since they incorporate both. They take a couple hours to set but the prep time is hardly any work at all. The end result is some surprisingly good looking chocolate bars that will last for a while when they’re stored in the refrigerator.
Ingredients:
- 1 package of chocolate wafers
- 13 ounces of chocolate spread
- 2 cups chocolate chips
- ¼ butter
- Salt to top
Start off by spraying down your baking pan with non-stick spray. Mix up those chocolate wafers until they become malleable that you can put them evenly into the pan. (This will be your crust.) Next, you can either layer the chocolate chips and top them with the chocolate spread, or mix the two layers together and then evenly spread it out. Lastly, you’ll just sprinkle a bit of salt on top of the look and a bit of punch, and then just let the tray sit in the refrigerator for a couple hours until it hardens up and can be sliced. That’s it!
Peanut Butter Pin Wheels
These peanut butter pin wheels look impressive but only require three ingredients. Like the recipe above they will require some chill time, but do not require any baking whatsoever.
Ingredients:
- 1 ½ cups peanut butter chips
- 1 ½ cups chocolate chips
- 1 can sweetened condensed milk
First, line a baking sheet with tin foil and then spray it with some nonstick cooking spray for good measure. Next microwave together the peanut butter chips and half of the condensed milk.
It should take about 30 seconds of heat to create a fudge like consistency. At that point, you will pour that mixture into the baking sheet. In another bowl do the same thing with the chocolate milk and the rest of the milk.
Once that mixture is all blended together then layer the chocolate on top of the layer of peanut butter that you’ve got in the pan. The next step is just allowing these layers to harden up a bit. That should take about 15 minutes at room temperature.
At that point, you can roll the entire thing up, wrap it in plastic wrap, and toss it into the refrigerator for about two hours. Once it hardens to the stage it will be possible to slice it up, giving you the end result of gorgeous peanut butter and chocolate pin wheels.
Chocolate, Pretzel, Peanut Butter Cookies
You can’t ever really have too much chocolate or peanut butter in your desserts, right? These cookies are no bake but they do require a tiny bit of stove time. They’re worth it.
Ingredients:
- 2 cups pretzels, chopped
- 1 ½ cups old-fashioned oats
- 1 ½ cups chocolate chips
- 1 cup peanut butter
- 2 tablespoons coconut oil
- Salt to taste
The first thing you need to do is mix together all of the ingredients into a pot, and then stir that for a few minutes just until everything melts. That’s the end of the cooking. Cover a baking sheet with some parchment paper and then start dropping globs of the mixture onto the sheet.
They can be whatever size you like but a tablespoon is a good measurement. Place the tray into the freezer for 20 minutes to make them firm. Remove and enjoy.
These cookies can be saved for quite a while. They’ll keep for about five days in the refrigerator and longer in the freezer. But the odds of them lasting that long without being eaten first are slim.
