Gingerbread White Chocolate Cookie Bars; sweetly spiced soft and chewy cookie bars, crammed with creamy white chocolate!
(recipe originally posted 16 November 2019)
As I have trumpeted on many previous occasions; everyone knows that the best part of a cookie is the centre.
Anyone who says otherwise has no regard for basic human enjoyment. Or they’re probably robot trying to fool you that they are human. Either way, don’t listen to them.
The absolute joy of these Gingerbread White Chocolate Cookies Bars (as with any cookie bars) is that they are essentially the centre of a cookie but all the way through. Your mouth will gratefully receive maximum soft chewiness with even less effort than it takes to make regular chocolate chunk cookies. I know. Mental.
These Gingerbread White Chocolate Cookie Bars are exactly as you’d imagine. Gentle whispers of cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and clove. Melting chunks of creamy white chocolate. Dense, fudgy, thick cookie. These are a full-on festive mouthful.
They were one of the first things that sprang to mind when I needed to publish some Christmassy recipes this month. As much I adore regular gingerbread biscuits, they’ve been done to death, and not everyone appreciates the rolling and cutting and crunching they require. Instead, these bars will offer you all the addictiveness of a bakery white chocolate cookie with the festive flavour of warming spices.
Prefer a recipe video? You can watch how to make these here on my YouTube channel!
I’m not ashamed to say that they are incredibly easy to make too. You don’t have to worry about multiple baking trays, chilling the dough forever, spacing cookies out evenly, or getting them all the same size. This dough is simply dumped into a tin, spread into an even layer and then baked into a big old slab of cookie. You can slice them as skinny or thicc as you like, you can even slice the edges off for maximum softness.
Eat them at room temperature for wholesome joy. Eat them warm from the oven if you wish to experience a spiritual awakening.
To make these gorgeous Gingerbread White Chocolate Cookie Bars, just follow the recipe below!
Gingerbread White Chocolate Cookie Bars
Notes
BE A MAVERICK: you can turn this into a sharing dessert by eating it hot from the oven with scoops of ice cream on top!
Ingredients
- 160g (10 ½ tbsp) soft salted butter (if using unsalted, add a pinch of salt!)
- 120g (½ cup) caster sugar
- 120g (½ cup) dark brown sugar
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 egg
- 1 egg yolk
- 250g (2 cups) plain flour
- 2 tsp ground ginger
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- ½ tsp mixed spice (or a mix of nutmeg and cloves)
- 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
- 250g (9 oz) white chocolate, broken into chunks
Instructions
- In a large bowl, beat together your butter, sugars and vanilla until creamy.
- Stir the egg and egg yolk in and beat well to combine.
- Add the flour, spices and bicarbonate of soda to the bowl and stir well to combine into a thick dough.
- Pour most of the white chocolate chunks into the bowl of dough (reserving some for the top) and stir to evenly distribute. I promise the aching arm muscles will be worth it when you take a bite of these Gingerbread White Chocolate Cookie Bars!
- Grease and line a 30cm x 18cm (12in x 7in), or 20cm x 20cm ( 8in x 8in), baking tin with greaseproof paper.
- Tip the dough into your prepared in and flatten it out evenly with your hands or the back of a spoon. Press the remaining chocolate chunks onto the top of the dough.
- Cover and chill the the bowl of dough for 30 minutes, or anywhere up to 48 hours. This isn’t essential if you’re in a hurry but will ensure the bars have a perfect texture!
- Preheat your oven – 180 C / 160 C fan / 350 F / gas mark 4.
- Once the dough has chilled and the oven has preheated, bake the tray of cookie dough for 20-30 minutes. When baked it should look and feel dry on top, it may still feel soft but it will firm up slightly as it cools!
- Allow to cool completely.
- Slice into 12-20 cookie bars.
- Enjoy!
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I tried to make these however I consistently seem to have issues with what I believe to be my butter. These are still super soft for the inner 2/3s of my 8×8 tin baked for 35 mins at 160. I have tried to make cookies they spread and Blondies don’t seem to bake well in the middle either. I think it is the Aldi unsalted butter I use… could this be possible?! So desperate to get my baking right for some presentable yummy treats like these!!
Hi Lorraine, there is a chance it could be the butter, but it sounds more like your oven may be the issue. Each oven is very different in terms of how well it spreads heat around, with some ovens running hotter or colder in parts than the actual temperature gauge says. For example, my family’s oven is a bit older than the one I have in my current apartment, which means I often have to bake things a bit longer than recipes state. Some ovens have the opposite issue, burning things in too short a time. Could this be the case? Have you ever tried using an oven thermometer inside?