No-bake Cookie Dough Truffle Bars

Happy Halloween Everyone! I am very happy to have the time to share this recipe with everyone, since I have been fairly swamped with necessary, productive activities the last few weeks.  Since my first round of midterms are over, I decided to bring some treats to work today.  Today also seemed like an appropriate day to get into the Halloween spirit.

As a child, Halloween (and all holidays for that matter) were at least month long ordeals.   Starting October 1, I would start thinking of costume ideas and planning out trick-or-treating routes to get ready for the big day.  Don't even get me started on Christmas.  The moment Halloween was over, I was scouring the toy catalogs to start making my list. As a college student, it is almost the opposite. There I was, thinking about all the notes I had to catch up on or the essays I had to write when I realized, "oh hey, Halloween is this Thursday...... wait it is Thursday right?? Or is it Wednesday?"  I obviously am on top of it .....NOT.  Aside from my daily concerns of overdosing on Vitamin A from the copious amounts of pumpkin and sweets potatoes I eat each day (pumpkin in oatmeal anyone?) I literally have put no thought into the holiday.  So, I thought, what better way to enter Halloween week than making a delicious Halloween treat?

After spending a while on Pinterest pursuing the various cute tombstone brownies, eye ball cake pops or spider cookies I could make, I simply couldn't find anything that would take a reasonable amount of time with relatively few ingredients.  So I ditched the  Halloween theme, and shortly after had a "brain blast" (what show, everyone???) of the easiest, most delicious (albeit calorically dense) dessert ever.

I realized that eggless cookie dough finds its way into many of my recipes, such as in http://cookingwithgertrude.blogspot.com/2013/06/cookie-dough-brownie-bombs-danger-danger.html, as do Oreo truffles, such as here:  http://cookingwithgertrude.blogspot.com/2012/12/tis-season-for-awesome-cupcakes.html. Why not put them together to form Cookie Dough Truffle Bars? No baking (ie, no dealing with pesky Gertrude) , 20 minute prep time, out-of-this world taste.... can't get much better than that.  Driving to the store I was redetermined to tie back in my halloween theme by using Halloween Oreos for the Oreo truffle layer.  My dreams were crushed when I learned that  Safeway apparently does not believe in virtue of Oreos with bright orange cream. So, in a last-ditch effort to tie some halloween-ness into my treats, I picked up some Candy-Corn M&Ms (which are really just candy corn colored M&Ms with white chocolate) to mix into the cookie dough and put on top.

 I'm sure someone else in the wonderful world of Pinterest has done this exact idea, but I am going to tell myself that this recipe was a unique Cooking-with-Gertrude Creation.  Want to recreate the magic? Here is what I did

No-bake Cookie Dough Truffle Bars

Oreo Layer 
8 oz. Oreos (I used 1 pack of mini-Oreos, but 20 normal Oreos is equivalent)
4 oz. Cream Cheese (I realized after that I should have used pumpkin cream cheese!  That would have been way been way more Halloween-y than my lame M&Ms ) 

1. Line 8 by 8 pan with aluminum foil  
2. Crush up Oreos using the method of your choice. I started with the old-fashioned fist crush and then put the cookies into the food processor to finish the job.  
3.  Soften cream cheese and mix into oreo crumbs to make a dough-like mixture.  
4. Pat mixture into bottom of pan
5. Put into fridge as you prepare the cookie dough 

Cookie Dough layer (adapted from  http://www.cupcakeproject.com/2009/03/raw-cookie-dough-thats-safe-to-eat.html) 

2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup unsalted butter, melted
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup milk
1 cup candy corn M&Ms  
1 cup chocolate chips 

1. Mix all ingredients together into a large bowl.  
2.  Pat about 1 inch cookie dough (or more or less, depending on your love for cookie dough) on top of Oreo layer. I had some extra cookie dough..... Too bad I can NEVER find any use for extra cookie dough :) just kidding. 


Chocolate Topping 

1 cup chocolate chips 
1 tbs shortening 

1. Melt chocolate and shortening at intervals of 30 sec until smooth
2. Pour over cookie dough layer
3.  Garnish with extra M&Ms 
4.  Place in fridge for about an hour to set before cutting 
5.  Enjoy!