Chicken Free Honey-Pear Crumble Bars

Total time1 hr 30 min

Prep time20 min

Cook time40 min

4.9

(9)

These bars are the kind of thing you pull out of the oven and immediately want to eat straight from the pan — golden, fragrant, and packed with soft, honey-kissed pear. The filling comes together on the stovetop with ripe pears, a drizzle of honey, a touch of nutmeg, and a splash of apple cider vinegar that brightens the whole thing into something genuinely special. Tapioca starch does double duty here, thickening the filling into a glossy, jammy layer while also helping the crust and crumble hold their shape without any wheat flour in sight. The base uses rolled oats and rice flour, which gives the bars a satisfying, slightly rustic texture that crumbles in the best possible way. Cold butter worked into the dry mixture creates those irresistible clumpy, buttery pockets on top that turn deep golden in the oven. Letting them cool completely before cutting is the hardest part, but it's what keeps them from falling apart when you slice into that neat 3×3 grid. These are the kind of bars that disappear fast at a gathering — and nobody needs to know how straightforward they were to make.

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Ingredients

9 servings

For the crust and crumble

1 ½ cups rolled oats
¾ cup rice flour
¼ cup tapioca starch
⅓ cup granulated sugar
¼ tsp fine sea salt
½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, cold and cut into ½-inch cubes

For the pear filling

3 medium ripe pears (about 1 ½ lb), peeled, cored, and cut into ½-inch dice
3 tbsp honey
1 tbsp tapioca starch
¼ tsp ground nutmeg
1 tbsp apple cider vinegar

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. Scatter the cold butter cubes over the dry mixture 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 work it until smooth.

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