How to Turn Cookie Dough Into Bars: Pan Size, Temperature and Bake Time

Press the dough ¾ to 1 inch thick, bake at 350°F, and allow about 2½ times the cookie bake time. A typical chocolate chip recipe (about 7 cups of dough) fills a 9×13 pan and bakes in roughly 25–33 minutes. Pick the pan from the dough volume: 4–6 cups for an 8- or 9-inch square, 6–8 cups for a 9×13, more than 8 for a half sheet.

Baking drop-cookie dough as one pan of bars saves forty minutes of scooping and rotating trays, which is why it is the standard trick for bake sales and cookies for a crowd. The method below follows King Arthur Baking's guide to turning a cookie recipe into bars, with the arithmetic worked through.

Step 1: Estimate How Much Dough You Have

Add up the cups of the main ingredients and ignore anything under 3 tablespoons (salt, baking soda, vanilla). For a classic chocolate chip recipe:

Ingredient	Amount	Counts as
Flour	2¼ cups	2¼ cups
Sugars (white + brown)	¾ + ¾ cup	1½ cups
Butter	1 cup (2 sticks)	1 cup
Eggs	2 large	about ⅓ cup
Chocolate chips	2 cups	2 cups
Total		about 7 cups

The creamed dough ends up a little smaller than the raw total, but the estimate is close enough to choose a pan.

Step 2: Choose the Pan

Dough	Pan	Bars when cut
4–6 cups	8" or 9" square	16 (4 × 4)
6–8 cups	9×13"	24 (4 × 6) or 32 (4 × 8)
more than 8 cups	13×18" half sheet	48 (6 × 8)

The goal is a layer ¾ to 1 inch thick; thicker bars stay chewier in the middle, thinner ones bake crisper. Line the pan with a parchment sling — two strips crossing, with the ends hanging over the sides — so the whole slab lifts out for clean cutting.

Step 3: Temperature and Time

• Oven: 350°F. If the cookie recipe says 375°F or higher, lower it to 350°F so the edges don't overbake before the center sets.
• Time: multiply the cookie bake time by 2½ — or by 3 for a smaller pan with dough thicker than ¾ inch.
• If you lowered the temperature, add 2–5 minutes for every 25°F.

Worked example: the chocolate chip recipe above bakes 9–11 minutes as cookies at 375°F. As bars: 9–11 × 2½ = 23–28 minutes, plus 2–5 minutes for dropping to 350°F, so about 25–33 minutes in a 9×13 at 350°F. Start checking at 25.

Step 4: Tell When They're Done

Look for edges that have puffed slightly and turned golden, and a center that looks set rather than glossy and wet. A toothpick in the middle should come out with a few moist crumbs, not clean — bars keep cooking from the pan's heat and firm up as they cool. Let them cool completely, at least an hour, before cutting; warm bars tear and crumble.

Which Cookies Work as Bars

• Work well: chocolate chip, oatmeal raisin, peanut butter, M&M, white chocolate macadamia, snickerdoodle (sprinkle the cinnamon sugar on top), most drop cookies.
• Don't: thin crisp cookies such as lace cookies or tuiles, meringue cookies, and cookies that depend on a shape, such as cut-out sugar cookies or sandwich cookies.

Bars freeze well for up to 3 months, wrapped tightly once cooled. For other pan swaps — a 9×13 recipe in two square pans, say — the baking pan size converter gives the scaling factor, and the cake to cupcake converter handles cake batter.

Frequently Asked Questions