Butter Pecan Gooey Bars with Eggnog Rum Buttercream

So, I'm a Mormon. You can kind of tell by my side-bar.

Anyways, in our church, there's lots of different sections for kids. For the girls 8-12, they have Achievement Days. You do lots of fun activities once a week and try to strengthen your faith and all that.

For one of the activities we did a bake-off. We'd make something at our house, and then we brought it to the church and tasted all the food and judged it.

Obviously, I'm a baker. I was a baker even back then. This happened just last year. I had to win this thing. I had to! I was just going to make cake mix cookies, but I overheard one of the other girls saying she was going to do that. I'd obviously have to make mine cooler. I looked downstairs in our basement, and saw butter pecan cake mix.

Lightbulb. (tell me, you just said that in your best Gru voice right?)

So I was going to make butter pecan cookies. But I still needed to make them cooler. I looked on the back of the box. It said something about rum frosting. Bang! Now we're making butter pecan cookies with rum frosting.

I started to make it super fast style, running back and forth from the fridge to the Kitchen-Aid. In the confusion, I accidentally grabbed margarine instead. Margarine has a lot more moisture than butter. They used to be almost the same, but they've been adding more water ever since. So, my cookie dough was really, well, not sticking together. To moist. So, I made it into bars instead.

OMGosh. Best. Decision. Ever. Made. It was so good! And then I put rum frosting on top . . . Swoon.

Of course, I won the bake off thingy.

Even though it was a year ago, I still remember how good they were. So for almost a month now, I've been asking my mom for butter pecan cake mix. She finally got some, and I made these bars lickety split last Sunday.

Then I started recreating the frosting.

I could smell it. Oh yeah. It smelled kind of like egg nog. So I added some nutmeg to it. And then a teeny tiny little dot of yellow food coloring. Then it was the color of egg nog.

So, needless to say, the whole family basically inhaled these. I mean, gooey butter pecan cake mix bars with eggnog rum buttercream, of course everyone loved it! It's not possible to not like heaven.

Butter Pecan Bars with Eggnog Rum Buttercream
Butter pecan gooey cake mix bars that are topped with a delicious buttercream made with nutmeg and rum extract.
Butter Pecan Bars Ingredients:

• 1 box butter pecan cake mix
• 1 stick margarine, softened
• 1 tablespoon cornstarch
• 2 eggs

Directions: Preheat oven to 350. Mix ingredients in a bowl. Press into a greased 9x13 pan. Bake for 12 minutes (that's an estimate, you might want to check a few minutes earlier, or bake it a little longer). Once cooled, frost with buttercream, and serve.

Eggnog Rum Buttercream Ingredients:

• 2 tablespoons butter
• 2 cups powdered sugar (divided into 1 cup and 1 cup)
• 4 tablespoons milk
• 2 tsp nutmeg
• 3 tsp rum extract
• *optional* 1 really small drop of yellow food coloring

Directions: Cream butter alone. Add 1 cup of the powdered sugar and add milk. Gradually add the other cup until you reach desired consistency. Add nutmeg, rum extract and food coloring. Frost the bars once they are cooled. Serve.

When I made this, the buttercream was twice the ingredients I posted. It made way too much. We used the rest for graham crackers and it was great. But, when I posted this I cut it down in half so there shouldn't be any extras.

Photo Credit: My Recipes