Flourless Chewy Noels Bars – Updated Classic Christmas Cookie

Nutty, buttery, chewy noels bars, a classic Christmas cookie, have been updated to be flourless with the addition of almond flour. A great non-chocolate addition to your holiday cookie plates!

Growing up my mom always made cookies at the holidays to go on plates that we would deliver to our neighbors.

Helping her make and deliver them was one of the traditions I always looked forward to at Christmas.

She would make different cookies, but there were always a few staples – peanut butter balls and peanut butter swirl bars were usually included (we’re definitely a peanut butter-chocolate family!), as was some type of cut out cookie my sisters and I would decorate.

The other staple cookie I remember making the most was a simple bar cookie called Noels.

I’m not sure why they were called such a holiday name when there isn’t anything really holiday-ish about their appearance.

But these simple bar cookies had two things going for them:

• They took about 10 minutes to make and 20 minutes to cook, so a lot less time consuming than other holiday cookies.
• They had a wonderful buttery, nutty flavor with a nice chewy texture.

It has been years since I made them, but I recently pulled out the recipe I copied from my mom’s and decided to update them to be flourless since the original recipe only used 1/3 cup of flour.

Since they are basically a nut bar, replacing the flour with almond flour seemed the best way to go.

I had to adjust some of the cooking techniques because the bars are a bit more crumbly, but they still have the buttery flavor and great texture we loved in the original.

And now I have a new cookie bar for my holiday treat bags that will work for the gluten free people in my life!

Flourless Chewy Noels Bar Cookies

Ingredients

You only need 5 ingredients along baking basics of salt, baking powder and vanilla:

• Chopped nuts, either pecans or walnuts
• Brown sugar
• Almond flour (fine ground flour, not almond meal)
• Eggs
• Butter

And powdered sugar for dusting the tops of the bars for the traditional Noels bar look.

Though the powdered sugar can be optional, the bars are only slightly sweet (I decreased the sugar, too – I just always do with older cookie recipes!), so a dusting of some type of raw sugar would be nice if you didn’t want to use powdered sugar.

Directions

This is where I had to adjust the original technique – the bars are stickier and too fragile to be dumped out warm on a cooling rack.

Instead, you coat the pan with spray or oil and then line the bottom and two sides with parchment.

Add the butter to the prepped pan to melt in the oven while mixing the dough together.

Then it’s simply a matter of mixing the dry ingredients together before adding the wet ingredients.

You do need to mix really well after adding the eggs and vanilla – at first it seems dry, but keep mixing until everything is incorporated well.

Then carefully pour evenly over the melted butter in the pan and bake for about 20 minutes until nicely browned on the top.

Dust with powdered sugar while warm. Then let cool in the pan.

Use the parchment edges to transfer the bars to a cutting board and cut into 16 bars, dusting with more powdered sugar if you’d like.

All that’s left is to enjoy that vintagey-Christmas goodness, updated so everyone can enjoy them!

Sweetest Season Cookie Exchange

For a number of years, I’ve been happy to join a group of food bloggers who share cookie and candy recipes during the holidays, called The Sweetest Season Cookie Exchange.

You can check out the other 42 cookies right here on this page – it’s a great resource for finding new cookies to make!

More Cookies To Try