For the fourth straight year you tempted us with your amazing holiday recipes — and it was tough to choose just one to be the winner.

But of the more than 250 recipes we received, we selected Chai gingerbread bars, from Nicole W. of Toronto, as our top recipe this year! Nicole wins a Kitchen-Aid Pro 5 series stand mixer, courtesy Canadian Tire, and also has her recipe featured (along with 30 others) in our downloadable 2012 holiday cookie book. We’ll be highlighting those 31 recipes on our site over the course of the month.

Happy baking everyone, and congratulations, Nicole!

Here’s Nicole’s winning recipe:

Chai gingerbread bars

Ingredients:

2 cups whole wheat flour

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon allspice

1 teaspoon chai tea leaves

1 teaspoon ground ginger

1 tablespoon fresh grated ginger

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1 cup butter, softened

1 cup dark brown sugar

1/2 cup white sugar

2 whole large eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350F. Spray a 9 x 13 baking pan with cooking spray.

In a bowl, put together the flour, all the dry spices, chai tea leaves and baking soda. Mix. In your mixer, beat the butter with the sugar until fluffy. One at a time, add the eggs. Beat until combined. Mix in the vanilla and grated ginger. With the mixer on low, slowly add the flour mixture. Blend until completely combined.

Scoop the batter out of the bowl and into the pan. Spread it out evenly. With a greased spatula (sprayed with cooking spray, because the batter is pretty sticky), smooth out the batter. Sprinkle the top with a bit of sugar for an extra crunch, this step is totally optional. Looking at the pan you may think that there just isn’t enough batter, it rises up quite nicely.

Bake for 25 minutes. When poked with a toothpick, it should come out clean with a few moist crumbs. Cool completely before cutting. If you can wait, chill them a bit in the fridge too, they taste fantastic cold!

Enjoy! 🙂

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to share this family favourite with you!

Nicole

Download the 2012 Holiday Cookie Book here.