❤️😍❄️ Iced Gingerbread Bars are soft, chewy, and full of rich, gingery molasses flavor! Way faster and easier than rolling out gingerbread cookies, they’re a no-mixer, no-fuss recipe, and the sweet icing seals the deal!
Why You’ll Love This Easy Gingerbread Dessert Recipe
- These bars have a delicious, soft, and chewy texture, with no rolling dough or complicated steps required, making them perfect for Christmas baking. You don’t even have to wrap the dough in plastic wrap and chill it in the refrigerator. Just combine, bake, and enjoy!
- There are no eggs, which can be helpful when serving those with food allergies or intolerances.
- If you’ve ever made any of my gingerbread or molasses treats, you’ll know I’m not shy with the spices. There’s nothing worse than bland, and the bars are robustly flavored with rich molasses and ginger without being overpowering. However, if you’re very sensitive to spices, you may want to dial things back a bit.
- The sweet icing complements the warming spices beautifully. Icing always catches my eye.
Love gingerbread?
Try my baked gingerbread donuts, classic gingerbread cookies, and gingerbread pancakes, too!
Recipe Ingredients and Notes
To make these gingerbread cookie bars, you’ll need:
- Light brown sugar
- Unsalted butter – Use a plant-based butter to keep these bars dairy-free
- Spices (ground cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, ginger)
- Salt
- All-purpose flour – I haven’t tested this recipe with gluten-free flour, but imagine it would work as long as you use a 1:1 all-purpose gluten-free flour. When measuring the flour, be careful not to over-measure or hard-pack it. If you add too much flour, the bars will turn out dry and crumbly
- Baking soda
- Molasses – Use a mild or medium molasses. Do NOT use blackstrap molasses, it’s way too bitter
- Confectioners’ sugar (powdered sugar)
- Milk – Whole milk will create the richest taste, but any regular or non-dairy milk will work
Swap the icing
I love the light, sweet taste of the simple powdered sugar icing. However, if preferred, you can use a rich cream cheese frosting, like I do on my gingerbread bars with cream cheese frosting. Or, try sprinkling plain powdered sugar over the bars instead.
Note: Scroll down to the recipe card section of the post for the ingredients with amounts included and for more complete directions.
How to Make Iced Gingerbread Bars
Unlike other gingerbread recipes, these bars are super quick and easy to make:
- Cream the butter and sugar in a large bowl.
- Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients. Stir the molasses in last.
- Turn the cookie dough mixture into a greased 8×8-inch baking dish, spreading it out in an even layer.
- Bake in a preheated oven until the center is set. You’ll know the bars are ready to be pulled from the oven when the center is set and the edges are pulling away from the sides of the pan.
- Cool completely at room temperature, and top with icing. The icing takes about 15 minutes to fully set. I recommend waiting until it’s set before slicing the bars. Otherwise, you’ll have a big mess on your hands.
Double the recipe
For a double batch, simply double the ingredients and bake in a 9×13-inch pan.
Iced Gingerbread Bars
Equipment
- 1 Stand Mixer Fitted with a Paddle Attachment
- 1 Wire Rack
- 1 Medium Bowl
Ingredients
Bars
- ½ cup light brown sugar, packed
- ½ cup unsalted butter, softened
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon ground ginger
- ¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
- ¼ teaspoon ground cloves
- ¼ teaspoon salt, or to taste
- 1 ½ cups all-purpose flour, don’t overmeasure
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- ¼ cup medium or mild molasses
Icing
- 1 cup confectioners’ sugar
- about 2 teaspoons water, cream, or milk
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350F. Line an 8×8-inch pan with aluminum foil, spray with cooking spray; set aside.
- To the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment (or large mixing bowl and handheld electric mixer), add the brown sugar, butter, and beat until smooth. Stop and scrape down the sides of the bowl.
- Add the cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, cloves, salt, and beat to combine.
- Add the flour (don’t overmeasure or hard-pack the flour or bars will be dry and crumbly), baking soda, and beat to combine. Mixture will be dry.
- Add the molasses and beat to combine.
- Turn mixture out into pan and hard-pack it with a spatula. It will be on the dry and crumbly side but bakes together fine.
- Bake for about 20 minutes or until center is just set. Edges will be pulling away slightly from pan; don’t over-bake because bars firm up as they cool.
- Place pan on a wire rack to cool for about 45 minutes before adding the icing.
- To a medium bowl, add the confectioners’ sugar, liquid of your choice, and whisk until smooth and combined. Play with the liquid and sugar amounts as necessary to achieve desired consistency.
- Evenly drizzle icing over bars, noting you will likely have extra. Alternatively, pour icing over bars for complete coverage. Icing will set up in about 15 minutes. I recommend waiting until it sets up before slicing and serving.
Notes
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
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More Molasses Desserts:
Soft and Chewy Gingerbread Molasses Chocolate Chip Bars – Rich, chocolaty, and like eating a piece of molasses fudge!
Soft and Chewy Molasses Gingerdoodles — 3 favorites combined! Soft molasses cookies, chewy gingerbread and crinkly snickerdoodles! So good!
Soft Molasses Coconut Oil Crinkle Cookies – No butter, no problem. One of my favorite molasses cookie recipes!
Chocolate Gingerbread Cake — An EASY, no mixer cake that’s perfect for the holidays! Chocolate and ginger are amazing together! The GINGER spiced whipped cream is the literal icing on this cake!
Molasses Triple Chocolate Cookies – Chocolate is used three times for a fun twist on the traditional. No mixer required!
Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies— Between the molasses, pumpkin pie spice, and pumpkin pie spice extract that I used, these pumpkin chocolate chip cookies beautifully showcase the flavors of fall!
Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Bread— This pumpkin chocolate chip bread is truly the best homemade pumpkin bread you’ll ever make. It’s moist, packed with chocolate chips, and tastes like fall!
Averie, I’m so excited about making these today! Question: I only have blackstrap molasses in the pantry. Can I use that and perhaps cut it with honey or something else so it won’t be as strong? Or should I just run to the store and get a mild molasses? Can’t wait to taste them! All of your recipes look amazing!!
I personally would just go to the store and get what you need rather than tinkering and then wondering….
Averie, I just made these. I Put it in the oven and then I was worried suddenly why wasn’t there vanilla in the recipe. But when I tested it, I think the spices really were a bold flavor! I have made about 5 of your recent recipes. My hands down favorite is the Graham cracker toffee. Seriously it was to die for. You are just awesome!
You can always add vanilla but with so many other spices, it almost gets lost to me at least. Glad you loved the graham cracker toffee!
LOVE these Averie- I reckon gingerbread should be year round…well this recipe will be at least :D
Year-round for sure!