The Best Healthy Apple Bars (gluten-free)

Why you will love this recipe:

• These homemade apple crumble bars taste amazing! They have a delicious shortbread crust with an incredible apple cinnamon sugar crumble topping.
• These apple dessert bars are healthy enough to eat for breakfast, but delicious enough for dessert. They are gluten-free, dairy-free, refined sugar free, and paleo and can easily be made vegan too!
• They make great leftovers and store well in the fridge so they are great for meal prep.
• These healthy apple bars are made without oatmeal and instead are made with almond flour making them higher in protein compared to most apple bar recipes.
• They are the perfect dessert to serve for Thanksgiving or Christmas.

Ingredients and substitutions:

• Apples - you can use any type of sweet, red apples for making these healthy apple bars. I personally love using gala, Honeycrisp or Pink Lady apples.
• Almond flour - almond flour is such a great gluten free and grain free flour. It's high in protein, full of healthy fats, and easy to use. Do not use almond meal as it is too coarse and gritty.
• Pecans - pecans are used to give the crust for these apple bars a unique flavour, and delicious texture. I recommend using raw pecans rather than roasted pecans.
• Honey or maple syrup - either of these natural sweeteners can be used to make these healthy apple bars while keeping them refined sugar free. If you are vegan, be sure to choose maple syrup.
• Cinnamon - cinnamon and apples are a match made in heaven and ground cinnamon helps turn these into the most delicious apple cinnamon bars.
• Vanilla extract - this helps enhance all the amazing flavours of these fruit bars.
• Lemon juice or orange juice - this helps add a slight citrus flavour to the apple layer and helps contrast the sweetness of the apples.
• Butter or coconut oil - either of these can be used to make the crust for these healthy apple bars. If you are dairy free or vegan be sure to use coconut oil.
• Baking soda - to help the crust rise when it bakes.
• Orange zest - this adds such a delicious and unique flavour to the shortbread crust for these bars.
• Sea salt - this helps enhance the flavours in these dessert bars.

Recipe variations and add ins:

• To make these into vegan apple bars: use coconut oil and maple syrup instead of butter and honey.
• If you can't have almond flour I recommend using cashew flour to make these healthy apple bars.
• To make these into protein apple bars: add 4 scoops of collagen peptides to the apple layer before you mix it up.
• Instead of using almond flour for the topping you could use finely shredded coconut, rolled oats, or quick oats instead.

How to make healthy apple bars:

Step 1

Peel the apples and cut them into pieces approximately 1.5cm x 1.5cm in size and transfer them to a sauce pan or pot with a small amount (~1cm) of water in it. Place the pot on the stovetop on low heat and simmer the apples for about 20 minutes (until they are tender).

Step 2

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and while the apples are cooking, start making the crust by adding the crust ingredients to your standing mixer (except for the additional 1/2 cup almond flour and orange zest) and blend on low until smooth.

Step 3

Take approximately 2/3 of your crust mixture and press it into the bottom of an 8" x 8" pan lined with parchment paper so that you have a layer about 1 cm thick.

Step 4

Place the pan in oven and bake for 10 minutes, or until the crust edges turn golden brown.

Step 5

Once the apples are soft enough, remove them from the pot using a slotted spoon (try and limit the amount of liquid that you get) and place them in a large bowl. Add the ground cinnamon, vanilla, honey, and orange juice to the apples and blend with a pastry blender to make the apples more soft and tender.

Step 6

Once the bottom crust is done baking, remove the pan from the oven and cover the crust with the apple mixture.

Step 7

Add the 1/2 cup almond flour and orange zest to the remaining crust ingredients and blend well with a spoon or pastry blender. You should get a more crumbly texture at this point (add a bit more almond flour if you need to). Then top the apple layer with your remaining crust ingredients.

Step 8

Place the pan in oven to bake for another 15-20 minutes, or until the top layer becomes golden brown. When they are done baking, let the bars cool, then cut them into pieces and enjoy!

How to serve these healthy apple bars:

These bars are delicious served either warm or cold. They are perfect as is, but you could make them even more decadent by topping them with vanilla ice cream, vanilla yogurt, whipped cream or coconut whipped cream.

How to store:

Store any leftover bars in the fridge in an airtight container for up to 7 days.