Printed: 12/04/2023
These tender and chewy gingerbread cookie bars are really easy to make—no mixer, no dough chilling, and no dough rolling required! They’re scrumptious plain, or topped with spiced cream cheese frosting. Skip the cookie cutters and make gingerbread bars as a substitute!
While you want an enormous batch of cookies however are pressed for time, cookie bars are the best way to go. This recipe makes a generously sized 9×13-inch pan of soppy, chewy gingerbread cookie bars, excellent for sharing, particularly on the holidays.
Should you love the holiday-favorite flavors of heat spice and molasses, such as you take pleasure in in gingerbread cookies and crisp molasses cookies, you’ll discover those self same cozy flavors right here; however the texture is oh-so tender and chewy—like a gingerbread model of a brownie!
Why You’ll Love These Gingerbread Cookie Bars
- Cookie bars are tremendous tender and chewy, not cakey
- Full of that nostalgic molasses and spice taste related to the vacations
- Makes a big pan to serve a crowd
- No mixer, no dough chilling, no dough rolling—no fuss!
- Faster and simpler to make than many cookie recipes
- Can add white chocolate chips or butterscotch chips for texture selection
- High with a layer of cinnamon-spiced cream cheese frosting
In contrast to these tender molasses cookies or conventional gingerbread cookies, there’s no dough chilling, no rolling dough into particular person balls or rolling out dough to chop into shapes (after which re-rolling), and no baking in batches. The one ready you’ll must undergo by is for the pan to chill for 1 hour earlier than you chop them into bars. (I’m sorry!)
Easy Substances, No Mixer
Like with these favourite chewy chocolate chip cookies, utilizing melted butter makes for the softest, chewiest bar cookies. I normally like to make use of melted butter in bar recipes like selfmade brownies and blondies as a result of the bars style chewy, not cakey. I examined this recipe with creamed softened butter, and the baked end result ended up wanting extra like a puffy sheet cake.
Right here’s all the things else you want for these gingerbread cookie bars:
- Flour: All-purpose flour is the bottom of this recipe.
- Baking Soda: Baking soda helps these bars rise as they bake, and we use quantity of it to face as much as the heavy melted butter and molasses.
- A Beneficiant Quantity of Spices: Ginger, cinnamon, cloves, allspice, and nutmeg; plus, a pinch of black pepper—the identical secret ingredient I at all times add to pumpkin pie!
- Salt: Salt provides taste and balances the sweetness.
- Sugar: Use a mixture of brown sugar and white granulated sugar.
- Molasses: Use unsulphured; blackstrap is simply too bitter for these.
- Egg: An egg binds all the things collectively.
- Vanilla Extract: For taste.
White Chocolate Chips (Elective): Should you love white chocolate chip molasses cookies, be happy so as to add some white chocolate chips to those bars, too. Fold them in because the final step in making the dough, similar to we do with chocolate chip cookie bars. Butterscotch chips are additionally a scrumptious addition!
Have I Talked about No Dough Chilling?
Simply soften, combine, press, and bake!
The dough will likely be slick from the melted butter, however needs to be straightforward sufficient to unfold/press into the pan. Pat it down as finest you’ll be able to. It could look like it isn’t sufficient dough, and the layer will likely be skinny. However the bars rise as they bake.
Success Tip: Line the pan with parchment paper, leaving some overhang. As soon as the bars are cooled and frosted, merely carry the entire thing out utilizing the parchment overhang. Set it onto a chopping board and slice. Simple!
Bake for simply till the highest is ready, and keep away from over-baking. Cool the bars for no less than 1 hour contained in the pan earlier than frosting and/or slicing.
High With Spiced Cream Cheese Frosting
These gingerbread cookie bars are fabulous on their very own, however then once more, a bit frosting is at all times a good suggestion. My favourite cream cheese frosting is much from primary; it’s extremely creamy, silky easy, and has that refined tang to it. We’re scaling it down, and in addition kicking the flavour up a notch by including pinches of among the spices used within the cookie bars. The result’s much like the spiced cream cheese frosting on these pumpkin bars.
And, in fact, some sprinkles are the proper festive accent on prime. I used gingerbread cookie-shaped sprinkles, one thing like these, and a few Christmas-colored nonpareils. Right here’s a 4-pack of Christmas sprinkles, and I actually love these snowflake sprinkles, too. A number of choices!
Should you’re not planning to frost these gingerbread cookie bars, I like to recommend sprinkling the highest with coarse sugar or festive sprinkles earlier than baking. As a result of a bit sparkle is at all times welcome on the holidays!
You could possibly even prime with a sprinkling of chopped crystallized ginger, like we do for these chocolate ginger sparkle cookies.
Sally’s Cookie Palooza
This recipe is a part of my annual cookie countdown known as Sally’s Cookie Palooza. It’s the most important, most scrumptious occasion of the 12 months! Browse dozens of cookie recipes over on the Sally’s Cookie Palooza web page together with:
and listed here are 75+ Christmas cookies with all my finest success guides & suggestions.
Gingerbread Cookie Bars
Prep Time: 20 minutes
Prepare dinner Time: 25 minutes
Whole Time: 1 hour, 45 minutes (contains some cooling)
Yield: 24 bars
Class: Dessert
Technique: Baking
Delicacies: American
Description
These tender and chewy gingerbread cookie bars are really easy to make—no mixer, no dough chilling, no cookie cutters, and no dough rolling required! They’re scrumptious plain, or topped with spiced cream cheese frosting. Cautious to not over-bake these; they’ll nonetheless appear and feel fairly tender on prime, however the bars set as they cool.
Spiced Cream Cheese Frosting
Directions
- Preheat the oven to 350°F (177°C). Regulate oven rack to the middle rack place. Line the underside and sides of a 9×13-inch steel or glass baking pan with parchment paper, leaving an overhang on the perimeters to simply carry the bars out of the pan. Put aside.
- Whisk the flour, baking soda, ginger, cinnamon, allspice, cloves, nutmeg, pepper, and salt collectively in a big bowl. Put aside.
- In a medium bowl, whisk the melted butter, brown sugar, granulated sugar, and molasses collectively till no lumps stay. Whisk within the egg and vanilla. Pour this into the flour combination and blend collectively with a big spoon or rubber spatula. Make sure to combine till no lumps of flour stay. The dough will likely be very thick and glossy.
- Switch dough to the ready baking pan and press/easy into a fair layer. It could not look like sufficient dough, and will probably be a skinny layer; that’s okay.
- Bake for 23–26 minutes or till the highest is ready, however nonetheless look fairly tender, and a toothpick inserted within the middle comes out principally clear with a number of moist (not moist) crumbs. Don’t over-bake. Bars puff up within the oven, however settle as they cool.
- Permit the bars to chill within the pan set on a wire rack for no less than 1 hour.
- Make the frosting: In a big bowl utilizing a handheld or stand mixer fitted with a whisk or paddle attachment, beat the cream cheese and butter collectively on medium velocity till easy and creamy, about 2 minutes. Add confectioners’ sugar, ginger, cinnamon, and allspice, and vanilla extract. Beat on low velocity for 30 seconds, then swap to excessive velocity and beat for two minutes. Style. Add a pinch of salt if desired.
- Unfold the frosting on the cooled bars. High with sprinkles, if desired. To assist set the frosting, refrigerate for half-hour earlier than slicing and serving. This makes chopping simpler and fewer messy. Use the overhanging parchment to carry the bars out of the pan, and lower into squares.
- Cowl leftover bars tightly and retailer within the fridge for as much as 5 days. Should you skipped the frosting, cowl and retailer plain gingerbread cookie bars at room temperature for as much as 3 days, or within the fridge for as much as 1 week.
Notes
- Make Forward & Freezing Directions: You can also make the cookie dough and chill it within the fridge for as much as 3 days or freeze for as much as 3 months. Permit to come back to room temperature and proceed with step 4. Baked and cooled cookie bars, with or with out frosting, freeze nicely for as much as 3 months. Thaw bars in a single day within the fridge and convey to room temperature earlier than serving.
- Particular Instruments (affiliate hyperlinks): 9×13-inch Glass Baking Pan or Steel Baking Pan | Parchment Paper | Glass Mixing Bowls | Whisk | Silicone Spatula | Cooling Rack | Electrical Mixer (Handheld or Stand) | Gingerbread Cookie-Formed Sprinkles | Christmas 4-pack Sprinkles
- Can I Halve the Recipe? Sure, you’ll be able to halve the recipe for an 8-inch or thinner 9-inch batch of bars. The bake time is about the identical, however start checking for doneness at 22 minutes. It may be troublesome to halve an egg precisely, so I do advocate making the unique 9×13-inch batch, and you’ll freeze extras.
- Butter: Keep away from letting the melted butter cool for too lengthy, in any other case your dough will likely be crumbly as a substitute of soppy (and your cookie bars can find yourself cakey). As quickly because it’s melted, stir within the sugars and molasses as instructed in step 3.
- Molasses: I exploit and advocate unsulphured or darkish molasses. (I like Grandma’s model. The type I exploit is labeled “unique” molasses.) Blackstrap molasses is extraordinarily bitter and never ideally suited on this recipe.
- Cream Cheese in Frosting: Use brick cream cheese, not the spreadable variety that is available in a bath.
Key phrases: gingerbread cookie bars
