Nitrate & Nitrite Free Honey-Nutmeg Apple Crumble Bars
Warm spiced apples, golden crumble, and a drizzle of honey — these bars hit every note you want from a cozy baked treat. The filling leans on honey instead of refined syrups or processed sweeteners, and a whisper of nutmeg does all the heavy lifting in the spice department, keeping the ingredient list clean and straightforward. Because the recipe skips cured or processed ingredients entirely, there's nothing hiding in here that you'd need to second-guess — just fruit, whole oats, butter, and pantry staples. The crust and crumble do double duty, pressing into a sturdy base and then scattering over the top for that irresistible golden, clumpy finish. Tapioca starch thickens the filling just enough so the bars slice cleanly once cooled, giving you neat, bakery-worthy squares without any fuss. They're the kind of thing that disappears fast at a gathering, and nobody needs to know how simple they were to pull together.
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Learn more →Ingredients
9 servings
For the crust and crumble
- 1 cup rolled oats
- ¾ cup rice flour
- ¼ cup tapioca starch
- ¼ cup granulated sugar
- ¼ tsp fine sea salt
- ½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, cold and cut into ½-inch cubes
For the apple filling
- 3 medium apples (about 1 ½ lb), peeled, cored, and cut into ¼-inch slices
- 3 tbsp honey
- ¼ tsp ground nutmeg
- 1 tbsp tapioca starch
- 1 tbsp unsalted butter, melted
Instructions
- 1
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C). Line a 9×9-inch baking pan with parchment paper, leaving a 2-inch overhang on two opposite sides to use as handles for lifting the bars out later.
- 2
In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the rolled oats, rice flour, tapioca starch (the crust-and-crumble portion), granulated sugar, and fine sea salt until evenly combined. Add the cold butter cubes and work them in with a pastry cutter or your fingertips until the mixture resembles coarse, clumpy crumbs with some pea-sized pieces of butter remaining — do not overwork it into a smooth dough.
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