Caramel Oatmeal Bars

These Caramel Oatmeal Bars are made with brown butter and have layers of caramel and chocolate that make these bars so gooey and rich!

I recently made a batch of caramel for the blog and needed some recipes to add them to, so Caramel Oatmeal Bars were it! These are essentially Carmelitas! They have a cookie dough base on the bottom, with chocolate and caramel in the middle layer, then topped with more cookie dough. They're fudgy and chewy, and have the best flavor due to the caramel and brown butter.

Why You'll Love this Recipe

• Brown Butter: this Caramel Oatmeal Bars recipe is absolutely elevated with the addition of brown butter. Gives it such a delicious nutty flavor.
• Fudgy & chewy: The oatmeal/flour combination and the caramel give the bars such a fudgy texture.
• Easy: It's a pretty easy recipe and can be whipped up in less than 40 minutes.

Jump to:

• Why You'll Love this Recipe
• Ingredients You'll Need
• How to Make Caramel Oatmeal Bars
• Substitutions
• Variations to Try
• Storage
• Pro Tips
• FAQ
• Other Recipes to Try:
• 📖 Recipe
• 💬 Reviews

Ingredients You'll Need

• Butter: For this recipe, I use brown butter, which is melting the butter, than continuing to cook it to brown. This gives the bars a rich and nutty flavor.
• Flour: All purpose flour works great here.
• Quick oats: I only ever have quick oats on hand so all my recipes use that. In a pinch, you can use old fashion oats and just pulse it a few times in the food processor.
• Brown sugar: These bars use all brown sugar, which cuts down on the sweetness a little, especially since we're adding sweetness with the caramel sauce.
• Egg: One egg for binding.
• Vanilla extract: Flavor galore!
• Baking powder: We need a bit of a lift, so leavening is important.
• Salt: Balances sweetness and for flavor.
• Chocolate: I use 70% chopped chocolate, but you can use semi-sweet chocolate chips.
• Caramel sauce: I highly recommend making your own homemade caramel sauce and I have a wonderful recipe, but you can use store-bought as well.

See recipe card for quantities.

How to Make Caramel Oatmeal Bars

Steps to make brown butter

• Melt butter in a medium sauce pan on medium heat. Stir the butter to make sure it melts evenly. Once the butter is completely melted, it will start to foam up. Continue stirring the butter. As it cooks, it will start to change into a deeper color. This could take 6-8 minutes.
• You'll start to notice a nutty aroma and the butter will begin to have brown specs at the bottom of the pan. 
• The entire process of browning butter from start to finish should not take more than 10 minutes on medium heat.
• Once butter is browned, pour it into a heat proof bowl and set it aside to cool for about 5 or 10 minutes.

Steps to make Caramel Oatmeal Bars

• Wet Ingredients: In a medium bowl, add (slightly cooled) brown butter and brown sugar and mix using a spatula. Add the egg and vanilla extract and mix.

• Dry Ingredients: Add the flour, quick oats, salt, and baking powder and mix, then add 1.5 oz of the chocolate (or chocolate chips if that's what you're using) and mix.

• Spread in pan: Place ⅔ of the dough into the bottom of an 8x8 pan and spread it out completely.
• First bake: Bake for 10 minutes, then remove it from the oven and sprinkle the rest of the chocolate on top. Then pour the caramel on top. (if it's not very pourable consistency, microwave it for about 20 seconds). If you need to, you can use a spoon or offset spatula and spread the caramel all over the chocolate. If it mixes together, that's fine.

• Add remaining dough: Take the remaining dough and add it to the top of the caramel. Just flatten each piece a little with your fingers and place them all around. It won't cover the entire pan, but that's ok.
• Second bake: Place back in the oven for 18-23 minutes until the edges are golden brown and you start to see the caramel bubble.

• Cool: Remove from the oven and cool for at least 2 hours before slicing and enjoying.

Hint: Let the brown butter cool before adding the brown sugar and egg, otherwise the egg could scramble.

Substitutions

• Chocolate: Instead of chopped chocolate, you can use semi-sweet chocolate chips or a mix of milk and dark chocolate.
• Caramel: I love adding homemade caramel sauce, but store-bought works too.

Variations to Try

These Caramel Oatmeal Bars are delicious as is, but if you’d like to jazz them up some more, you can add any kind of mix ins like nuts or chocolate candies. Experiment and see what you like!

Storage

Storing: They keep well for 4-5 days at room temperature in an airtight container or ziploc bag.

Freezing: You can freeze them tightly wrapped for a few months.

FAQ

Other Recipes to Try:

• Biscoff Blondies
• Brown Butter Pecan Chocolate Chip Cookies
• Espresso Brownies with Espresso Cream Cheese Frosting
• Double Chocolate Brownies

📖 Recipe