This classic cherry crumble bars recipe tops a buttery shortbread pie crust with sweet cherry filling. It’s like homemade cherry pie in the convenient form of a bar!
Crowd pleasing cherry bars
I grew disliking cherry flavored candies, vitamins, and drinks and thinking it meant I did not like cherries.
It wasn’t until high school when I tasted a ripe cherry for the first time and realized… I actually really love cherries.
And now? You will often find fresh cherries in my kitchen, canned cherries in the pantry, and frozen cherries in the freezer.
Today’s homemade cherry crumble bars are soft, chewy, and made entirely from scratch – no artificial canned pie filling or or cake mix here.
They are one of my family’s favorite easy summer desserts, and I hope you love this magical recipe as much as we do!
Also try these Strawberry Oatmeal Bars
Cherry crumble bar recipe video
Ingredients list
Depending on the specific ingredients you choose, these cherry squares can be high fiber, low sodium, cholesterol free, dairy free, and low calorie (about 100 calories each).
Cherries – Sour cherries like Montmorency or Morello will give you that quintessential tart cherry pie taste. Sweet cherry varieties like Bing or Rainier are also wonderful here. I do not recommend maraschino cherries for this recipe.
Choosing fresh or frozen cherries is entirely up to you. I prefer frozen, because they often come already pitted, meaning less work for me!
Oats – Use quick oats, old fashioned rolled oats, or instant oatmeal. Substitute rolled quinoa flakes for gluten free bars.
Flour – I like whole grain spelt flour for these healthy cherry crumble bars. You can also use regular white flour, all purpose gluten free flour, or oat flour.
Almond flour tastes delicious in the recipe if you do not mind crumbly bars. For best results, do not use coconut flour because it is very dry.
Sugar – You can choose white sugar, brown sugar, xylitol, or granulated erythritol for the half cup sugar in the crust and crumb topping.
Any dry or liquid sweetener works in the fruit filling, including honey, pure maple syrup, stevia baking blend, or coconut sugar.
Butter – Salted or unsalted butter are both good options and do not have much of a taste difference in the final result. For vegan cherry bars, use melted coconut oil, vegetable oil, or plant based butter.
Other ingredients – The recipe also calls for ground cinnamon, baking powder, cornstarch or arrowroot, and a little salt.
Leftover cherries? Make Cherry Frozen Yogurt
Katie’s favorite flavor variations
Stir half a teaspoon of pure vanilla extract, or the seeds from one vanilla bean, into the cherry filling to create a cherry vanilla flavor. Top with sliced almonds if desired.
Or for cherry chocolate chip, stir in half a cup of mini chocolate chips with the cherries. Garnish with more chocolate chips before baking.
Replace half a cup of oats with cocoa powder for black forest bars. Slice and serve with shaved chocolate and whipped cream.
Finally, you can replace some of the cherries with an equal amount of blackberries, raspberries, strawberries, blueberries, or chopped peaches.
Feeding guests or a large family? Feel free to double the recipe and bake in a 9×13 inch pan.
How to make the best cherry crumb bars
- Gather all ingredients, and preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit (or 177 degrees Celsius).
- Line the bottom of a square eight inch baking pan with parchment paper, or grease the pan very well.
- In a large mixing bowl, stir the oats, flour, cinnamon, salt, sugar, and baking powder.
- Add the melted oil or butter, and use a fork or a food processor to mix until fine crumbles form.
- Firmly press two thirds of the oat streusel dough into the prepared pan, reserving the rest for later.
- Dice the cherries, discarding pits and stems. Then mix the fruit with one tablespoon sweetener of choice and the cornstarch.
- Spread the cherry pie filling over the dough in the pan. Sprinkle remaining dough evenly over top. Press down firmly.
- Place the pan on the center rack of the preheated oven, and bake for forty five minutes. Carefully remove the cherry cookie bars from the oven and let cool.
- For clean slices with minimal crumbling, I recommend refrigerating until cold, because the chilled baked good is much easier to cut.
- You may leave the bars at room temperature for a few hours. For longer storage, keep leftovers in the refrigerator or freezer to ensure best freshness.
The recipe was adapted from my Homemade Cherry Pie Filling and these Peach Bars.
Cherry Crumble Bars
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 cups quick oats or rolled oats (150g)
- 2/3 cup flour (spelt, white, or oat) (80g)
- 1/2 cup sugar or xylitol (100g)
- 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1/2 cup oil or butter (100g)
- 2 1/2 cups chopped cherries (fresh pitted or frozen) (300g)
- 1 1/2 tsp cornstarch or arrowroot (7g)
- 1 tbsp pure maple syrup or sweetener of choice (15g)
Instructions
- To make cherry crumble bars, preheat the oven to 350 F. Grease an 8 inch baking pan well, or line the bottom with parchment paper. Stir the oats, flour, cinnamon, salt, baking powder, and sugar in a mixing bowl. Stir in melted butter or oil, then firmly press 2/3 of the dough into the pan. Stir cherries, cornstarch, and sweetener of choice in a bowl. Spread this fruit filling on top of the dough in the pan. Sprinkle reserved dough on top. Press down very firmly. Bake 45 minutes. Let cool, then refrigerate. The bars firm up considerably as they chill. For the best freshness, refrigerate or freeze any leftovers not eaten within a few hours.View Nutrition Facts
Video
Notes
More delicious fruit recipes
Chocolate Covered Strawberries
Hello,
I made these bars today but used strawberries instaed because i had so many. They are just tastilicious. I posted a pic of them on my blog if you care to see how they look. Keep baking!
They are beautiful! I’m so honored you tried them, and I think strawberries sound like a delicious variation.
ALL your blog photos are beautiful. Makes me *almost* wish for snow. Almost!
I couldn’t find a place to comment on your blog, so I hope you see this :).
Hey Katie, when making it with the vegan butter, does that make the recipe dairy free? I am trying to make a dessert for a friend who is allergic to gluten and dairy. Thanks! (These look delicious and I cannot wait to try them out)
Yes! Every recipe on my site is dairy free :).
Just be sure to use something like Earth Balance, which is dairy-free. And use almond or soymilk (or another nondairy milk).
great.. thank you!
I like to bake cherries and fresh apples in the oven. I make a glaze to pour over them before baking; olive oil, brown sugar, cinnamon and walnuts. I bake them at 350 until the apples are soft and serve warm with vanilla frozen yogurt or by its self. Very yummy!
I made these yesterday using coconut oil instead of vegan butter. They turned out great.! So yummy!!
I do not like cherries! I give them a chance every summer when my siblings go crazy and buy them in bulk- but yuck. Mostly, I’m just pick about having to pick out a seed in between each bite.
LOVE Cherries, detest cherry-flavored things.
I grew up picking cherries every summer in my Grandparent’s orchard (Washington State), and then we’d help pit them (with a big, counter-top pitter), and my Grandma would can them (great for cold fruit-soup, thickened with tapioca!). 🙂
Now, living in eastern Washington we pick TONS (like 120lbs!!) of cherries every year, pit & freeze them for year-round cherry “ice cream” (100% fruit, like banana ice cream…in the vita-mix), smoothies, cobblers, oatmeal, and anything else we can think of). It helps that we’ve found an orchard where we can get Bing (the super-dark, nearly black-purple), Rainier, Royal Anne, even pie cherries, for just $.80/lb.
Sorry if you’ve been asked this before and dealt with it on a post, but I’m always unsure as to how to convert stevia amounts when I don’t have it in “packets”. I have a bottle of powdered stevia that I don’t love to bake with because it has a weird aftertaste, and some vanilla-flavored liquid stevia that is much yummier but requires that I just make a wild guess on amounts when it’s called for in your recipes. Thoughts?
I highly recommend Nu-Naturals Stevia because it has less of an aftertaste than other brands. If you use that brand, then 1/2 a teaspoon equals one packet. 🙂
So glad for this recipe. I have some cherries in the fridge I need to eat before they go bad. I love cherries so I always buy more than my family can eat.
katie , could i use water instead of milk? I can’t wait to try thease!
I made these into a kind of a crisp – put the cherry layer in a pan and topped it with the crumble layer (subbed out a third of the flour for oats and added in about 1/4 c extra oats). It was delicious! Also, I added in about 1/4 almond extract in place of some of the vanilla extract and it just added that extra something-something.
Thanks Katie!