Apple Crumble Bars
No matter how many wildly creative cakes I whip up, my friends always come back for these simple old apple crumble bars. Their taste brings a familiar memory of mom’s or grandma’s apple pie, a sweet reminder of childhood.
By popular demand, I’m finally sharing the recipe for my vegan apple crumble bars. These delicious treats are easy to make, packed with natural and healthy ingredients, and free from refined sugar. The recipe is wheat-free and possible to make gluten-free.
Keep reading and enjoy this pure homemade goodness!
Ingredients for the apple crumble bars
To make this healthy version of apple crumble bars that taste just like grandma’s apple pie, you will need the following ingredients:
- Spelt flour – my favourite choice for this kind of cake. You can also use regular cake flour or gluten-free flour mix. A homemade mix of oat flour, rice flour and buckwheat flour is what I would personally go for if I needed a gluten-free version.
- Apples – any firm, crisp variety will work great.
- Coconut blossom sugar
- Raw cane sugar – if you want to skip it and keep the GI a bit lower, just swap for more coconut sugar
- Cinnamon
- Sea salt
- Cold-pressed coconut oil
- Cold-pressed olive oil
- Plant milk
- Tapioca starch or cornstarch.
This recipe is easily adaptable to suit your dietary needs – including gluten-free, oil-free and sugar-free options. Check out all the ingredient swaps explained in detail later in the text.
How to Make Apple Crumble Bars
These tasty homemade apple crumble bars are easy to make and require minimal prep time. Here is how:
1. Making the crumble dough
In a bowl, whisk together the flour, salt, sugar and cinnamon. Add the oils or butter, and mix them in with your hands until it looks crumbly and well-blended. Add the cold plant milk and mix just until combined, avoiding overmixing to maintain a nice, crumbly texture.
Alternatively, you can mix the dough in a food processor (totally optional, but I know some people prefer it like that – less messy and with clean hands). Add the ingredients in the same order as you would have if you did it in a bowl.
2. Preparing the apples
I recommend slicing the apples as thin as possible. These are my favourite options for slicing them perfectly:
- Mandoline slicer – For perfectly thin and even slices (up to 0.1 inch or 2 mm thick), use a mandoline slicer.
- Sharp knife – Alternatively, you can finely slice the apples with a sharp knife. Aim for thin slices, but don’t worry if you cannot achieve perfect uniformity. It will bake nicely anyway.
Thin slices will become tender without getting mushy during baking. Also, since the apples are sliced thin, peeling is optional! I usually leave the skin on because I use nice homegrown apples from my friends’ orchards.
If your apples are large and the mandolin slices turn out too big, you can cut them in halves or thirds with a knife. The next step will be easier if you do so.
After slicing the apples, add some starch to them and mix. The starch will absorb the liquid that comes out of apples as they bake and prevent the dough from getting soggy. If you want the perfect crumbly bars, don’t skip the starch.
3. Assembling the apple crumble bars
Grease your cake mould with some coconut oil and dust it with spelt flour, or use a piece of baking paper to be able to remove it easily after the cake/bars are baked.
Divide the crumble dough in half. Spread one half evenly over the bottom of your cake mould and press it gently to create a firm base.
Arrange the apple slices evenly over the crumble layer. Crumble the remaining dough topping over the apples. Use your hands to achieve a loose and crumbly texture.
4. Baking the apple crumble bars
Preheat your oven to 180°C (355 °F). Bake the bars for 50-60 minutes, checking on them at about 45 minutes. The bars are done when the top has a nice golden-brown hue.
Take the pan out of the oven and let the bars cool completely on a wire rack for at least an hour before taking them out of the pan and slicing them. This will ensure they set properly and you can cut clean, beautiful bars. After an hour, loosely cover the pan with a tea towel to prevent them from drying out.
Ingredient swaps
Flour alternatives and GF version
If you prefer regular cake flour, feel free to use it instead of spelt flour. My personal choice will always be spelt because my body doesn’t tolerate modern wheat that well, and I don’t believe wheat to be a healthy option for most people nowadays.
For a gluten-free version, try this: mix equal parts of oat flour, fine rice flour and buckwheat flour. If you cannot get a very fine rice flour, then I would recommend equal parts of oat flour, buckwheat flour, cornstarch and millet or quinoa flour.
These are only a few options I’ve found to work well, but I recommend experimenting with what works best for you. Not all producers mill these grains equally, so maybe you can find something more suitable around where you live.
If you decide on making the gluten-free version, just keep in mind that it will be more crumbly than the original. When made with my original recipe including spelt, these bars hold up very well, while the gluten-free ones tend to turn out a bit more gentle and crumblier.
They will be just as delicious though!
Sugar options
Coconut sugar is always my favourite and least processed option with the lowest glycemic index. In this recipe, I used half coconut sugar and half raw cane sugar because I like the result this combination gives with the flavour and colour of the dough.
You can definitely substitute the raw cane sugar with more coconut sugar if you want!
For an even healthier option, you can use date sugar (not date syrup because liquid sweeteners won’t give you the best texture in this recipe). Date “sugar” is a powder made by grinding dried dates.
For that reason (being literally whole dates with fibre and all), it doesn’t dissolve in water and mix that well with other ingredients. It will give you a nice result, but not a wow result. Still, if you really avoid any processed sugar, it can be a great option.
Oil swaps for apple crumble bars
First, let me explain the reason for choosing this particular oil combination. Even though my first choice for cooking is coconut oil, I’ve found that when made with pure coconut oil, these bars become too hard when cooled down.
Yes, they are meant to be kept at room temperature anyway, but what if you need to take them out in the winter? You would be left with a not-that-nice texture after the coconut oil solidified. The combination with olive oil solves this perfectly. The texture is consistent and perfectly crumbly in all conditions.
Avoiding oil as well? No worries. I got you covered for that too.
You can swap the oil with pure, 100% nut butter. I recommend a smooth almond butter because the almond flavour is mild and combines well with apples.
Check out this homemade nut butter recipe to learn how to easily make any nut butter at home. The recipe is with hazelnuts, but it works perfectly with almonds too.
If you prefer regular butter or ghee, feel free to use any of the two instead of oils (I would still go with about 130 grams of fatty ingredients altogether).
Milk options
Since you’ll need only a small amount of plant milk in this recipe, it doesn’t really matter which one you use. I normally use whatever I have in my fridge at the moment.
Check out this recipe if you want to make almond and hempseed milk at home. It is super easy, quick and much healthier than the store-bought one. Homemade plant milk is also a budget-friendly option since you only need water and a handful or two of nuts to make it.
For store-bought options, check almond milk, oat milk, soy milk or any other plant drink with as few ingredients as possible.
Also, if you do use dairy products in your diet, you can use regular milk instead of plant milk and butter instead of both oils.
Storing the apple crumble bars
These apple crumble bars maintain their perfect texture when stored at room temperature. Simply let the baked bars cool completely, then slice and store them in a closed container (metal, glass or plastic all work well). They’ll stay fresh for 3 days at room temperature.
For even longer storage, you can refrigerate the bars. In that case, take them out about 30 minutes before serving to allow them to come back to room temperature and achieve the best texture.
Apple crumble bars – equipment
To make the apple crumble bars at home without any hassle, you will need this basic equipment:
- mixing bowls
- mandoline slicer
- sharp vegetable knife (optional, instead of mandoline slicer)
- whisk (optional, for mixing flour)
- food processor (optional, if you want to mix the dough using a processor instead of hands)
- square cake pan, the best size is around 20 cm × 20 cm or get an adjustable one like the one on my link.
Apple Crumble Bars (Vegan, No Refined Sugar)
Make the best apple crumble bars that taste just like grandma’s apple pie. This recipe is naturally vegan, made with healthy ingredients and gluten-free adaptable. Enjoy this easy and delicious homemade treat!
Ingredients
Instructions
- In a bowl, whisk together the flour, salt, coconut sugar, raw sugar and cinnamon.
- Add the oils or butter and mix them in with your hands until it looks crumbly and well-blended.
- Add the cold plant milk and mix just until combined. Avoid overmixing to maintain a nice, crumbly texture.
- Slice the apples as thin as possible. I recommend using a mandoline slicer to achieve perfectly thin and even slices. If needed, cut the slices in half with a knife to make them a bit smaller.
- Dust the apple slices with starch, and mix to distribute it evenly. This will ensure your crumble dough base stays dry even after the apples release liquid as they bake.
- Grease a 20 cm × 20 cm cake mould with coconut oil and dust it with spelt flour to ensure your cake/bars can be easily taken out after baking. Alternatively, you can line the pan with baking paper.
- Divide the crumbled dough (topping) in half.
- Use the first half to cover the bottom of the pan - press it gently to even it out and form a solid base.
- Arrange the prepared apple slices evenly over the base layer.
- Crumble the remaining topping over the apples - do it with your hands to achieve the best, loose and crumbly texture.
- Bake the apple crumble bars in a preheated oven at 180°C (350°F). You can start checking on them at about 45 minutes. They are done when the top has a nice golden-brown hue.
- Take the pan out of the oven and put it on a wire rack for at least an hour to cool completely before slicing. If you let them cool for longer, you can loosely cover the pan with a tea towel after about an hour, to prevent them from drying out.
- Slice the bars into a preferred size and keep them in a closed container at room temperature.
Notes
- For a gluten-free option, I recommend using a homemade mixture of equal parts oat flour, fine rice flour and buckwheat flour. Another good option is using equal parts of oat flour, buckwheat flour, cornstarch and millet or quinoa flour.
- If you don’t feel like bothering with all these different flours, feel free to use your favourite store-bought gluten-free blend.
- In this recipe, you can use whichever type of milk you prefer. Check out this easy recipe for homemade hemp and almond milk if you want to make your plant milk (a healthy and budget-friendly option).
- Instead of the mix of oils in the recipe, you can use natural 100% almond butter, regular butter or ghee if that is something you prefer. It will take about the same quantity of all these mentioned alternatives.
- If you use regular butter, the texture will be even better and crispier if you crumble it into the flour while it’s cold and firm. You can even use a food processor to make the dough more quickly and hassle-free.
- All sugar in the recipe can be substituted with date sugar (powdered dried dates) for the healthiest possible version, or xylitol if you want an even lower GI.
- These apple crumble bars will stay fresh at room temp for about three days. For longer storage, the bars can be kept in the fridge in a closed container. To enjoy the best texture, take them out and let them come to room temperature for about 30 minutes before serving.
beautiful