Butternuts & Candy Cane Cookie Bars

I made these yesterday for Mel and me.  The recipe is called "Butternuts" and made w/ butterscotch candies and pecans.  Walnuts were cheaper so I just divided one bag of walnuts between both cookies.  Anyway, I really love peppermint bark, so at least 5 years ago I got the idea to substitute butterscotch for candy canes.  It would be good to melt some white chocolate over both kinds of cookies, so someday I'm actually going to try that!  The cookie dough is a bit crumbly so I decided to make the candy cane cookies into bars, and it worked better, especially since the candy melts and tends to make the cookies spread too much.  The cookies pretty much taste like yummy, buttery walnut shortbread w/ either a butterscotchy or pepperminty kick.  We both love these a lot!  Mel gives them both a 9;  I give the Butternuts  a 9, but the & Candy Cane Cookie Bars a 10!

P.S. I made the dumb mistake of slicing the top of my index finger on my left hand when I cleaned the food processor blade in between crushing the candies, so it's a little tricky to type.  Hopefully there aren't too many typos!!