Cakey Chocolate Jingle Bars with Nestle #HolidayCandy

I took a little trip to Walmart recently to pick up my Holiday candy after spotting a really fabulous-looking recipe on the Nestle Holiday Recipes site for Cakey Chocolate Jingle Bars.  Raya and I had a great little girls’ outing – in fact, if you want to take a look at the shopping trip, it’s in my Google+ album – you can find it right here!

She looks so sweet when she’s begging for candy, doesn’t she?  Stinker.

Anyway – the Nestle site has several really awesome-looking holiday recipes – this is the first one I have tried, but I printed off a few others that I also want to make this year.  Baking with candy?  Um, yes please! :)

Ingredients:

• 30 NESTLÉ BUTTERFINGER Jingles, unwrapped
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2/3 cup NESTLÉ® TOLL HOUSE® Baking Cocoa
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 2/3 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter or margarine, softened
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 large eggs

Preheat your oven to 375° F, and while that’s heating up, unwrap your Jingles.  This is a super fast recipe – once you unwrap these babies, you are about halfway done!

Mix your dry ingredients together – the flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt.  In a separate bowl, combine the  granulated sugar, brown sugar, butter and vanilla extract. Beat in eggs, then gradually beat in flour mixture. Stir in Nestlé Jingles – or I found it easier to just press them in into the batter when you add it to a 9-inch-square baking pan – it will be a stiff batter, much like cookies.

Bake for 18 to 20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool them in the pan on wire rack, then when you’re ready to serve them, cut them into bars.  (Before serving, you can optionally dust them with powdered sugar “snow” for a pretty effect.)

Once I had the Jingles on my table, there are other things you can do with them besides eat them all. (No really, it’s true!) I stacked up a fun little tree for the table.

This is a fun and easy decoration to let your kids make – you can either glue the Jingles onto card stock circles for a permanent decoration, or you can just let them play and stack them as an activity – and still eat them later!

Cut circles out in the following sizes (it’s okay if they are slightly larger):

• 3-1/4″
• 3″
• 2-5/8″
• 1-7/8″
• 1-1/2″

Then, just stack circles filled with Jingles up, until you have a “tree”!  The photos below will help show you how.  (I cut my top layer as a 1″ circle and I found that it was a little bit difficult to balance.  Making it a little larger should help fix that problem!)

I didn’t glue mine on… because I still want to EAT them.  Butterfinger Jingles are my favorite!

You can stay up-to-date with Nestle by liking their Facebook page or following them on Twitter – and be sure to take a peek at the holiday recipe collection at nestleseasonalrecipes.com.

Note: I am a member of the Collective Bias®  Social Fabric® Community.  This shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias™ and Nestle #CBias #SocialFabric.