Name: Flourless Gingerbread Chocolate Chip Bars
Prep time: 10 min
Cook time: 40 min
Total time: 50 min
Ingredients: 1 cup almond flour; 1/2 cup old-fashioned oats {ground into flour} or oat flour; 1/2 cup pumpkin puree; 1/2 cup light brown sugar (+ 2 tbsp); 1 egg; 2 tbsp blackstrap molasses; 1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips (+ 2 tbsp); 1 tsp cinnamon; 1/2 tsp ground ginger; 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg; 1/4 tsp ground cloves; 1 tsp vanilla extract; 1/2 tsp baking powder; 1/2 tsp salt

Flourless Gingerbread Chocolate Chip Bars

This flourless recipe for Gingerbread Chocolate Chip Bars is a healthier take on a holiday dessert, with the warm gingerbread spices of cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and cloves.

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Last December I posted a healthier dessert recipe for Peppermint Mocha Brownies, using no butter or oil and almond flour instead of white flour. I experimented in the kitchen yesterday with a gingerbread version and I think it turned out very tasty!

I have been inspired by holiday flavors lately, especially gingerbread. K and I visited the Museum of Science and Industry last week, to take in the Christmas Around the World exhibit. It’s a beautiful display inside the museum, with a four-story Christmas tree and over fifty smaller trees decorated to represent the holiday traditions of countries around the world. I picked up this Gingerbread Wonderland cookbook at the museum’s holiday store, and immediately made the Dark Gingerbread shape cookies.

Making gingerbread cookies is so labor intensive! As a follow-up to my cookie baking, I decided to create a recipe using gingerbread flavors without the hours of work. These Flourless Gingerbread Chocolate Chip Bars include a secret ingredient, the same as my Peppermint Mocha Brownies – pumpkin puree. Pumpkin puree gives the bars a lot of moisture and you don’t need to add any butter or oil.

I had a helper in the kitchen too – this little buddy napped the afternoon away.

These bars include my favorite gingerbread flavors – blackstrap molasses, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and cloves. I’m also a big fan of adding chocolate to gingerbread desserts. I used semi-sweet chocolate chips for this recipe, but I think dark chocolate chips would be delicious too.

These bars are fudgy and spicy, with the consistency of a brownie instead of a cookie. They are also gluten free since I used almond flour instead of white flour.