With a buttery crumble crust and sweet apple filling, these homemade apple crumble bars are soft, chewy, and absolutely delightful any time of the year.
The best apple crumble bars
These are pretty much guaranteed to disappear at parties!
Imagine all the deliciousness of traditional hot apple crumble, conveniently packed into a bar, with cinnamon apples pressed between a shortbread crust and crumble topping.
If you are looking for a simple and delightful seasonal dessert that isn’t pumpkin, be sure to give these classic baked apple crumble bars a try.
Also make these Healthy Chocolate Chip Cookies
I’ve now done raspberry, blackberry, blueberry, peach, and cherry pie versions of the recipe, but apple might just be my favorite flavor.
There is just something so cozy and comforting about the apple cinnamon combination paired with the rich crust and topping.
It’s a perfect dessert, not just for the Fall season, but also for Thanksgiving, Christmas, Fourth of July, or any time you are craving apple pie!
Readers also love this Brownie in a Mug
Apple crumble bar ingredients
For the recipe, you will need flour, ground cinnamon, baking powder, salt, sweetener, a fat source, cornstarch or arrowroot, and diced apple.
The bars work with white all purpose flour or with spelt flour or oat flour for healthy whole grain apple bars. I have not tried the bars with whole wheat flour and do not recommend using coconut flour or almond flour.
If you do not wish to use refined sugar, feel free to swap it out for an equal amount of unrefined coconut sugar, date sugar, or sugar free granulated erythritol or xylitol.
To sweeten the apples, you can use pure maple syrup, honey, agave, or any other all purpose liquid or granulated sweetener.
As a fun flavor variation, you can also stir in a handful of shredded coconut, finely chopped walnuts, or raisins with the diced apples.
The pastry crust can be made with butter, coconut oil, or even softened almond butter. For low fat apple crumble bars, replace three tablespoons of the fat with milk of choice.
As mentioned earlier, some or all of the apples can easily be swapped out for blackberries, cherries, blueberries, peaches, mango, or other fruit of choice.
Apple crumble bar recipe video
Watch the step by step video above.
Caramel apple crumble bars
If you are feeling really decadent, sprinkle a layer of finely chopped salted caramels on top of the apple layer before adding the crumble topping.
While these salted caramel apple bars might not be the healthiest option, they are a melt-in-your-mouth decadent autumn treat to enjoy in moderation and are always super popular at parties.
Update: Try this full recipe for Caramel Apple Bars
How to make apple crumble bars
Gather the ingredients, and preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
Line an eight inch square baking pan with parchment paper, or grease it well. Then set this pan aside.
In a large mixing bowl, stir the cinnamon, flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder. Stir in the butter or oil and optional milk of choice. Also add a fourth teaspoon of salt if using oil or unsalted butter.
Press about two thirds of this pastry dough very firmly into the bottom of the prepared baking pan to form a pie crust. Reserve the remaining dough.
Toss the peeled and diced apples with the cornstarch and liquid sweetener. Spread this easy apple pie filling evenly over the crust.
Sprinkle the reserved dough on top, and press this crumb topping down firmly.
Place the pan on the oven’s center rack. Bake for 50 minutes. Let cool before slicing, during which time the bars will firm up.
Storing the apple bars
Leftovers can be covered and stored on the counter overnight, with a small opening to allow moisture to escape and thus prevent against gummy bars.
After a day, refrigerate the apple crumble bars in an airtight container for freshness.
Or freeze the bars, with a layer of parchment paper in between each bar so they do not stick together. Thaw frozen bars before serving.
This recipe makes about twenty to twenty five apple crumble slices. I cut them into twenty five apple squares for the pictures.
The bars were adapted from my Strawberry Oatmeal Bars
Is the recipe vegan, gluten free, or keto?
For vegan apple crumble bars, simply choose a plant based butter spread or go with the coconut oil or almond butter. The bars are already naturally egg free.
Use certified gluten free oat flour to make gluten free apple crumble bars. I have not tried all purpose gluten free flour here, but please feel free to experiment!
While this recipe is not low carb or keto friendly, I do have many other keto dessert options, including Keto Cookies, Keto Cake, and Keto Cheesecake.
Apple Crumble Bars
Ingredients
- 2 cups flour (spelt, white, or oat)
- 1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
- 3/4 tsp baking powder
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 2/3 cup sugar or coconut sugar
- 3/4 cup butter or coconut oil or almond butter
- 3 tbsp milk of choice or additional butter
- 3 1/4 cup diced apple (2 large or 3 medium)
- 1 tbsp cornstarch or arrowroot
- 2 tbsp pure maple syrup or sweetener of choice
InstructionsÂ
- Preheat the oven to 350 F. Stir the first five ingredients together, then cut in the butter or stir in the oil. (Also add an additional 1/4 tsp salt if using oil or unsalted butter.) Press about 2/3 of the dough firmly into the bottom of an 8×8 pan lined with parchment paper. Toss the apples with the cornstarch and liquid sweetener, then spread this over the crust. Sprinkle remaining dough evenly over everything, and press down. Bake 50 minutes, then let cool before slicing into bars.The coconut oil version of the apple crumble bars (which is shown in the photos) will be more crumbly, so I recommend chilling the bars before cutting for cleaner slices.View Nutrition Facts
Video
Notes
More Apple Dessert Recipes
Overnight Oats (including an apple cinnamon version)
Made these last night for a potluck I’m going to today! Just wondering, what kind of vegan butter did you use in your recipe to get it to 84 calories? Thanks for posting these I’ll let you know how they go!
Hi Gabby,
The recipe to get 85 calories is linked above the nutritional info on that page. It actually doesn’t use any vegan butter at all.
Hope everyone likes them!! 🙂
I have to defend my favorite apple Red delish ( sens no one sems to like it) its relly god, but dont by the mushy ones! they dont taste god! but witch apple is god mushy? I alwas go for the real crispie apples! regardless of witch apple brand!
this recepie comes in very handy because i have left over apples from the garden, and they starting to lose the crisp so they are perfekt to bake with! 🙂
I love gala apples and jonagolds…anything crisp! 😀
If you are even considering making these bars…DO IT! I made these bars yesterday with a mix of Granny Smith and Fuji apples (I doubled the recipe, used a 9×13 pan, and used 1/2 ww pastry flour and 1/2 ap flour, I also opted for the brown sugar instead of Stevia) and they were such a hit that sadly, there are no bars this morning. You will be so delighted and so will those who gobble these up if you make them. Pronto!
These look amazing! For my birthday, my colleagues sent me a tray of fruit from edible arrangements that included chocolate covered apple slices. They rocked. 🙂
I love apples (except red delicious.- they are always mushy and mealy). My top three are honeycrisp, sweet tango, and pink lady.
These look amazing! My favorite apples are Jazz. A bit similar to Pink Lady apples, but maybe a bit more tart. They are a great blend of tart and sweet in my opinion. I love to eat them cold too 🙂
I HATE mushy apples. And Red Delicious in general. Honeycrisp are my favorite lately.
These look awesome! I promised the bf I’d bake if he drove me to the airport at an ungodly hour this week. Perhaps this is the ticket to a happy boy!
Hey, your blog is the cutest!
I have tried to microwave 70 % chocolate bits so it gets wet like a butter and then cut an apple in half and butter it on the apple and let it dry in the fridge.
It is so delicious, and a chocoholic like you should try it.
I would recommend to put either tiniest bit of cinnamon or ginger( or both!) on the apple before applying chocolate.
Pink lady’s are my absolute favorite apples! I can NEVER find them in the store though, why is that? Luckily honey crisp are right up there with the pink lady’s. I think apples and chocolate is soo good 🙂
I LOVE pink lady apples, but honeycrisp have stole me heart…:)
i made this tuesday and my family LOVED it. the only changes i made was playing with the flour- i had buckwheat, brown rice and spelt that i needed to use up so i mixed all those, and i used coconut flour instead of butter. DELICIOUS! thanks for your great recipes!
I made this last night and subbed out the flour for almond meal. It came out delish! I came home today after classes to find only a small square left as my partner ate the rest of it. I plan on trying this out with pumpkin next
Oh wow, pumpkin sounds genius!
I’m hoping it turns out well, though I can’t decide between pureed pumpkin or roasted pumpkin chunks. Decisions, decisions.
I was thinking about trying this with some soaked dates instead of the brown sugar. (I’m trying to go light on sugar these days). Think it would work? I’d reduce the liquid in general, and maybe some of the oil/butter too.
I’d love to hear about your experiment if you do try it!
I tried it! The flavor was great but I think I might have to work on the proportions. I used maybe a half a cup of soaked dates + coconut oil + one packet of stevia. The crust came out a little hard, but it tasted great. I might add a little more liquid to the apples next time, or maybe cook them a bit on the stove in advance. But I think the substitution of dates for brown sugar could definitely be perfected.
CARAMEL Apples?! YES PLEASE!!! 😀
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Honeycrisp in the US, Jonagold in Japan. Fuji is okay, too.
I think I lost my bread pan in the move, so I used a larger pan than called for and definitely need to try making this again correctly. (Tasted great but didn’t quite spread out right.) I used (non-vegan) yogurt in place of butter/butter substitute because I didn’t have any butter-type thing in the fridge and that worked fine.
Normally after sort of failing to get it right I wouldn’t comment, but I had to ask–for the 85 calories, do you make it into 8 (or 14?) bars like the raspberry version? There wasn’t a serving number on this recipe or the calorie info, so I checked out the original raspberry recipe. Thanks!
14
Thank you!