Buttermilk Bars with Chocolate Chips

A simple bar made with pantry ingredients is a sweet and tasty way to use that last dab of buttermilk. Between a cookie, cake and blondie in texture, your whole family will love these treats!

Jump to:

• Using leftover buttermilk
• Ingredients/Substitutions
• How to make buttermilk bars
• Tips and Tricks
• A few things that may come in handy
• Garnish/Finish
• 📖 Recipe
• More Small Sweet Treats

Using leftover buttermilk

This recipe was born from a love of using the last little bit of everything. Sara and I have said many times that we are a child and grandchild of children of the Great Depression. It has been instilled in us that food should never be wasted and so we try to never do that.

Enter a little dab of buttermilk in the bottom of the bottle. Top that with a love of using buttermilk in baking and there you have it. Buttermilk Bars (with the addition of another favorite - mini chocolate chips) are born!

Ingredients/Substitutions

• Butter - we try not to be picky about using salted or unsalted unless it's absolutely necessary, and in this case it's not.
• Brown sugar - we most often use light brown, but dark brown would be fine too.
• Egg - the standard is large
• Self-rising four - our favorite shortcut (we use it in our signature Easy Buttermilk Biscuits, in Sweet Potato Muffins, Charleston Chewies and many more recipes.
• Buttermilk - we like to use full fat buttermilk in baking, but if low-fat is what you have on hand feel free to use that.
• Vanilla (our favorite is vanilla bean paste and there's a link below if you'd like to order some.
• Mini Chocolate Chips - another favorite recipe with these are Mini Chocolate Chip Cheesecakes.

That's it, y'all. This is a simple, easy recipe!

How to make buttermilk bars

1. Start out by melting the butter. You can do this on the stovetop on simmer/low or in the microwave (be sure to cover your container).
2. Stir the brown sugar into the butter.
3. Add the rest of the ingredients (except the chocolate chips), mixing just well enough to blend everything.
4. Stir in the chocolate chips.
5. Spread the batter into a parchment paper lined 9x9 inch pan.
6. Bake at 325 degrees for 25 minutes or until center is set.

Refer to the recipe below for more details.

Tips and Tricks

If you start out melting your butter in a container large enough to hold all of the ingredients you can make this recipe in one dish (not counting the baking pan).

Lining a baking pan with parchment paper is a great way to prevent sticking and make it easy to cut your bars. We use this method all of the time - just check our Hummingbird Bread recipe and you'll see photos.

A few things that may come in handy

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Nothing fancy or complicated is needed here, but we do love to have on hand:

• Vanilla Bean Paste
• Parchment paper
• Dusting Wand for sprinkling powdered sugar

Garnish/Finish

Just like with our Charleston Chewies and Old Fashioned Cream Cheese Pound Cake we like to finish these bars with a sprinkle of powdered sugar. It's not necessary, but it gives them a "dressier" look.

If you'd like a light glaze you could use the one from our Blueberry Orange Nut Bread or this one from the Hummingbird Bread has a little cream cheese in it.

📖 Recipe

More Small Sweet Treats