These soft and chewy gingerbread cookie bars are topped with a rich cream cheese frosting and absolutely melt in your mouth!

We’re all having a moment with gingerbread right now and next up are these absolutely sinful gingerbread bars.

It starts with an insanely soft and chewy gingerbread cookie base and we cap things off with a luxuriously silky cream cheese frosting. And sprinkles of course, cause it’s the holidays.

I mean…I certainly wouldn’t blame you if you want to dive face-first into these beauts.

The best part is that we just took everything you love about gingerbread cookies, jammed it all into one pan, covered it with frosting and called the job DONE. No messing around with dough chilling or rolling out cookie dough today!

These Gingerbread Bars feature…

A soft and chewy gingerbread cookie base
Lots of silky vanilla cream cheese frosting on top
Easy to prep ahead of time for holidays and no dough chilling required

Making the Gingerbread Bars

(scroll down to the bottom of the post for the full recipe)

Ingredients You Will Need

Brown sugar
Unsalted butter
Molasses
Egg
Vanilla extract
All-purpose flour
Baking soda
Kosher salt
Ginger
Cinnamon
Cloves
Cream cheese
Powdered sugar

Choosing Your Pan

We recommend using a square 9-inch pan for this recipe as we found that this size was ideal for achieving that perfect cookie bar-to-frosting ratio and gives you 9 good-sized gingerbread bars for serving.

For best results, we recommend lining your pan with parchment paper to make for easy removal + cutting once you’re ready to serve the bars.

Tips for Perfect Gingerbread Bars

Cream butter and sugar together – make sure your butter is softened to room-temperature and cream well with the sugar several minutes until completely smooth.
Use stand mixer or mix dough by hand – this recipe is both mixer-friendly and old-fashioned-bowl-and-spoon friendly.
Bring egg to room temperature – this will help the egg mix more cohesively into the butter
Spoon and level flour – we use the spoon-and-level technique for measuring flour as this will prevent over-measuring your flour. Use a spoon to scoop flour into the measuring cup, then level with the back of a knife.
Don’t overbake bars – the middle of your bars should still be a little soft when they’re done – very similar to a cookie.
Cool bars before frosting – allow the bars to cool completely before frosting otherwise the frosting will melt off.
Use parchment paper to remove bars from pan – grasp the parchment paper overhang and gently remove bars from pan and transfer to a cutting board.
Clean knife between cutting bars – Use a kitchen towel to wipe the knife off between each cut for smooth, clean lines.

Recipe Variations

Try these ideas for a different twist on these bars.

Add chocolate – try folding semisweet chocolate chips or white chocolate into the dough.
Use a different frosting – you can use a traditional buttercream or try a powdered sugar glaze.
Add nuts – frost bars and garnish with toasted pecans or walnuts.

Storing and Freezing Bars

Allow bars to cool completely, top with frosting, and store in a sealed container in refrigerator up to 3 days. You can store them a few days longer if needed but we find they tend to get a little dry after 3 days.

To freeze bars, we do not recommend frosting them beforehand. Allow bars to cool completely, wrap well, and freeze up to 2 months. Thaw bars completely at room temperature then frost with cream cheese frosting when ready to serve.

Just going to put out a warning: you are going to eat WAY more of these bars than you intend to. The moist, chewy gingerbread cookie bar base is an absolute dream with the tangy cream cheese frosting.

Forget Christmas cookies, all eyes are on these beauties.

Save this recipe using the ‘save to recipe box’ button below. If you make it, please let us know! Leave a comment + star rating below, or take a photo and tag it on Instagram with #wholeandheavenlyoven.

More gingerbread favorites to try next!

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