Apple Crumble Bars are the best Sunday lunch dessert
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Apple crumble bars are apple crisp in bar form, and they just might beat out all the pies this year. Fighting words, I know.
I’ve loved apple crisp since eating mounds of my Mom’s perfect apple crisp as a kid. My Strawberry Crisp is as close as I can get to Mom’s thick slices of apples all tender and perfectly cooked, dripping in glossy thick apple juices. And while all crisp tastes amazing warm with a generous melty scoop of vanilla ice cream, I’ve always loved it just drizzled with cream.
The only problem with apple crisp is the spoon-y nature of it. Like most spoon it out of the pan desserts, it looks great in the pan, but 2 minutes later–chaos. And while it’s delicious chaos, you don’t always want your desserts to look like the 7 layer taco dip after halftime. All this to say that I decided to give these apple crumble bars a base.
The cool thing is that the crust is made from the same so it’s EASY. My family was like–you can carry these around in your hand?! So grab some butter, and let’s some epic apple crisp bars.
Apple Crumble Bars
Why you’ll love these bars
- Super easy: there’s only 6 ingredients needed. The toughest thing here is peeling and slicing the apples. If you can stir, you can make these bars.
- Feed a crowd: This is a Sunday lunch kind of dessert you can bring to a potluck or a big family dinner. These apple bars feed 15 easily which is way more than 1 pie and they’re easier to make than a pie.
- So much streusel: My love for streusel is well-chronicled. Shoot, I set up a whole streusel category because I use it so often. When I say I always have streusel in my freezer, I mean I ALWAYS have it in my freezer.
Ingredients for Apple Crumble Bars
- Apples
- Butter
- All-purpose flour
- Brown sugar
- Apple pie spice: or a combo of cinnamon and nutmeg. I like my apple pie spice because of the added vanilla sugar. The little bit of vanilla boosts both the apple flavor and the cinnamon tastes in desserts.
- Apple butter: use a good jarred apple butter, or try homemade apple butter or maple pear butter.
What apples should you use for apple crisp bars?
- Pink Lady
- McIntosh
- Jonathan
- Gala
I know people love Granny Smith, but they’re too tart for my taste. I personally will never recommend Granny Smith apples, but if you love them, use them.
In this batch I’m using a combo of Liberty and McIntosh.
Tips for making perfect apple streusel bars
- Use your knuckles: After you mix the crumble, you’ll dump out a little more than half into your pan. Use your knuckles to pack the crumble down into the pan. This will compact everything so that you get a nice crust that stays together when you cut the bars.
- Pre-bake the crust: Definitely bake the crust for a couple minutes before you turn the apples out onto it. This stops the crust from absorbing too much of the apple juices. These bars should be crunchy up top and crunchy below with soft tender apples in the middle.
- Slice the apples thin: Do your best to make thin slices of the apples. To do this, slice just to the right of the core on all 4 sides of the apple. From there, lay the apple pieces flat on your board and cut thin 1/16″ slices. Thin slices will lay pretty on top the crust and bake perfectly during the specified cooking time.
- Mix your sugar and flour: You’ll need to coat the apples with flour and sugar and spice before baking. If you mix the sugar and flour, it’ll keep the flour from making lumps instead of thickening the apple juices as it’s supposed to do.
What to serve with apple crumble bars
- Vanilla Ice Cream
- Drizzle of cream
- Cinnamon Ice Cream
Apple Crumble Bars
- Total Time: 85 minutes
- Yield: 15 bars 1x
Description
Take cozy apple crisp and put it in a bar form, and then you’ll get these juicy crumb bars with buttery crisp streusel doing double duty up top and also as a crisp crust that lets you cut perfect bars. Serve these warm with your favorite ice cream or better yet, a drizzle of cream.
Ingredients
Streusel
- 12 Tablespoons butter (170 g)
- 3 cups all-purpose flour (390 g)
- 1 and 1/4 cups brown sugar (266 g)
- 1 teaspoon apple pie spice (or 3/4 teaspoon cinnamon and 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg)
- Pinch of salt
Apples
- 3 pounds apples, preferably sweet or sweet/tart varieties that hold their shape in cooking like Pink Lady, McIntosh, Jonathan or Gala
- 1/4 cup brown sugar (53 g)
- 2 Tablespoons flour (16 g)
- 1 teaspoon apple pie spice
- 2 Tablespoons apple butter, preferably homemade apple butter or pear butter
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350 F (180 C). Butter a 13 x 9 pan and then line the sides and bottom of the pan with a piece of parchment.
Streusel
- Melt the butter in a small pan.
- Mix the flour, brown sugar, apple pie spice and a pinch of salt in a large bowl. Pour the butter over the flour mix and then stir to form large crumbs.
- Pour a little more than half of the streusel in the bottom of the baking pan. You don’t need to be precise here; you just need enough to cover the bottom of the pan.
Use your knuckles to press the streusel into a thin even layer of crust. You should not be able to see any crumbles if you did a good job on this step. - Bake the crust for 7 minutes. You don’t need the crust to be brown, but baking it a little will help the apple juices from making the crust soggy later. Set the crust aside to cool.
- Stir around the bottom of the bowl to make sure that the streusel is mixed well. Put the bowl in the freezer while you prep everything else.
Apples
- Wash and peel your apples.
- Slice just to the right of the core on all 4 sides of an apple. From there, lay the apple pieces flat on your board and cut thin 1/16″ slices. Thin slices will lay pretty on top the crust and bake perfectly during the specified cooking time.
- Mix the sugar, flour, and apple pie spice for the apples. Sprinkle this and the apple butter over the apple slices. Use your hands to mix everything together until the apples are coated with the apple butter and the flour mix.
- Pile the apples on top of the crust. Bake for 20 minutes.
- After 20 minutes, take the apples out of the oven. Scatter the frozen streusel over the top of the apples. Bake for 30-35 minutes, until the streusel is lightly brown and crisp and the apples are tender.
- Cool the bars for about an hour before you try to cut them. To cut, pull on the sides of the parchment, placing them on a cutting board. Cut into 15 pieces.
- Serve the bars warm with a scoop of ice cream or a drizzle of heavy cream.
- These easy apple pie bars will keep well at room temperature for up to 2 days or up to a week in the fridge. You can use my Mom’s trick of storing them in the oven, loosely covered with foil. Just be sure you remember they’re there!
Notes
Apple Crumble Bars with oats: for oat streusel, use 2 and 1/4 cups of flour (292 g) and 3/4 cup of old-fashioned oats (67 g) in the streusel. You’ll get a little different texture for the crumble topping and create something more like an oatmeal cookie for the crust.
- Prep Time: 30 minutes
- Cook Time: 55 minutes
- Category: Bar cookies
- Method: Oven
- Cuisine: American, German
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 1 bar
- Calories: 276
- Sugar: 24.1 g
- Sodium: 8.1 mg
- Fat: 9.5 g
- Carbohydrates: 45.8 g
- Protein: 2.9 g
- Cholesterol: 24.4 mg
