Turkey Free Honey-Nutmeg Apple Crumble Bars
These bars are everything you want from a fall dessert — tender spiced apples, a buttery oat base, and a golden crumble topping that shatters just enough when you bite into it. Honey does the heavy lifting in the filling, adding floral sweetness that pairs beautifully with the warm, earthy punch of ground nutmeg. The crust and crumble pull double duty, meaning less work for you and more of that satisfying texture in every single bar. Rice flour and tapioca starch keep things light without sacrificing any of the richness you'd expect from a classic baked treat. Cold butter worked into the oat mixture is the real secret here — those small, uneven pieces melt in the oven and create that irresistible, slightly craggy topping. Letting the bars cool completely before cutting is worth every minute of patience, since the filling sets up into clean, sliceable layers rather than a gooey mess. Whether you serve them at room temperature or slightly warm, they're the kind of thing that disappears fast.
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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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