Celery Free Maple-Ginger Pear Crumble Bars
Warm spiced pears, fragrant fresh ginger, and a double hit of pure maple syrup make these crumble bars the kind of treat that disappears fast from any dessert table. The base and topping are one clever mixture — rolled oats, rice flour, and tapioca starch bound together with cold butter and maple syrup — so you get a buttery, golden crumble on both the bottom and the top with minimal fuss. The pear filling is cooked down on the stovetop until it turns glossy and jam-like, which means every bite has that concentrated, almost caramel-sweet fruit flavor rather than a watery, disappointing center. Tapioca starch does the thickening work throughout, keeping the whole recipe free from any sneaky plant-based additives that can cause problems for people navigating strict ingredient lists. The bars bake up beautifully golden in under 35 minutes, and the parchment sling makes slicing them into neat squares genuinely easy. They're equally good slightly warm with a scoop of vanilla ice cream or packed into a lunchbox the next day — the texture actually holds up well once fully cooled.
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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
- ⅓ cup pure maple syrup
- ½ tsp baking powder
- ¼ tsp salt
- ½ cup 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 pure maple syrup
- 1 tbsp fresh ginger, finely grated
- 1 tbsp tapioca starch
- 1 tbsp unsalted butter
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 1/4 cup amount), baking powder, and salt. 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. Drizzle in the 1/3 cup maple syrup and stir with a fork until the mixture just comes together into a crumbly, slightly sticky dough.
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