These Apple Oatmeal Bars are healthy apple cinnamon bars. They are crunchy bars with apple pie flavors and topped with soft-cooked apples, crumble topping, and peanut butter caramel sauce.
I love healthy breakfast bars, like my Vegan Blueberry Breakfast Bars, Healthy Date Bars, or Strawberry Oatmeal Bars. This convenient on-the-go breakfast and also sweet, delicious healthy bars that almost taste like dessert.
These healthy apple pie bars are very similar but full of Fall spices to celebrate the cold weather with a sweet, healthy breakfast.
Ingredients and Substitutions
First, prepare all your ingredients. All you need to make healthy apple bars are:
- Oat flour. We make our own oat flour by grinding gluten-free certified rolled oat thinly into a food processor. You can replace this with all-purpose flour or almond flour.
- Rolled oats. Also known as instant oats.
- Coconut oil. Or vegan butter if preferred.
- Maple syrup. Or other vegan-friendly liquid sweeteners like agave syrup. Note that the bars will be sweeter with agave.
- Salt
- Vanilla extract
- Apples. Use crunchy apple variety like jazz, honey crisp, or pink lady.
- Cinnamon
- Nutmeg. Optional, but it enhances the Fall flavor of these vegan apple oat bars.
- Cornstarch or arrowroot flour
Choosing the Best Apples
Not all apples are equal when it comes to baking and creating desserts. In fact, some apples become soft and mushy in the oven, and it can ruin your recipe. The go-to apples for a sweet apple bar (or apple pie) are crunchy, firm apples that hold their shape when cooked.
The top 10 apple varieties for apple pie, bars that are sweet, firm, and have a perfect balance of crunch and sweetness are:
- Granny smiths
- Honey crisp
- Pink lady
- Golden Delicious
- Jonagold
- Jazz
- Braeburn
- Northern spy
- Mcintosh
- Red Delicious
How To Make Apple Oatmeal Bars
These healthy apple breakfast bars are easy to make in a few steps. The base and crumble toppings use the exact same recipe.
- The most important part of making a delicious apple bar is to prepare the apples. First, peel, cored, and cut into thin slices of about 1/4 inches (0.6 cm). It’s very important to peel the apples to avoid lumps of apple skins. Also, the thickness is very important. If you slice your apples too thick, they won’t cook as well, and the center of your apple oat bars won’t puree and soften as well.
- Combine all the dry ingredients together in a large bowl.
- Then stir in the wet ingredients to form a sticky oat dough mixture.
- Reserve 1/3 cup of the mixture for your bar toppings. It doesn’t look like much but it’s enough.
- Finally, press the remaining 2/3 cup of dough into an 8-inch x 8-inch square pan covered with parchment paper. I recommend oiling the parchment paper with a cooking spray to prevent the bar from sticking to it.
- Set aside the base on the countertop and store the topping in the fridge to set.
- Meanwhile, peel, core, and thinly slice the apples. Then, add the apple slices into a saucepan along with orange juice, cinnamon, nutmeg, and brown sugar.
- Cook the apples for 3 minutes until soft and golden brown. Then, stir in arrowroot flour or cornstarch and keep cooking for 2 minutes to slightly thicken.
- Pour and spread the cooked apples evenly all over the base. Then, crumble the remaining oat mixture left in the fridge on top of the bar.
- Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (180°C) for 30 minutes until the crumble is golden brown and crispy.
- Let the bar cool for 10 minutes in the pan, then pulling out the bar from the pan and cooling it on a cooling rack for 3 hours before slicing.
Serving
You can eat these apple oat bars plain or with some peanut butter caramel. To make the caramel combine all the ingredients below to form a sticky, runny vegan caramel.
- Peanut butter or almond butter for less saturated fat.
- Maple syrup
- Coconut oil
Drizzle the caramel on top of the bar just before serving. You can also serve these bars plain or with a dollop of dairy-free yogurt like coconut yogurt.
Storage Instructions
These bars must be stored in a sealed container in the fridge for up to 4 days. They soften with time, but you can rewarm the bars in a hot oven for 8-10 minutes just before serving. You can also freeze the bars into a box and thaw them on a plate the day before at room temperature.
More Healthy Vegan Breakfast Recipes
We love to start the day with healthy vegan breakfast bars or cookies made of oats. In fact, oats are fulfilling nutritious cereals full of plant-based protein, perfect to start the day with energy on your vegan journey. Below I listed some healthy vegan breakfast recipes:
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Vegan Apple Oatmeal Bars
Ingredients
- 1 ½ cup Oat Flour - or all-purpose flour or spelt flour
- 1 ¼ cup Rolled Oats
- ⅓ cup Maple Syrup - or agave or rice syrup
- ⅓ cup Coconut Oil - melted
- ¼ teaspoon Salt
- ½ teaspoon Vanilla
Apple compote
- 3 ½ cups Sliced Apples - about 3 crunchy apples like Jazz or Honey Crisp apples (340g)
- 3 tablespoons Maple Syrup - or agave or date syrup
- 2 tablespoons Orange Juice - or water
- 1 teaspoon Cinnamon
- ¼ teaspoon Nutmeg
- 2 teaspoons cornstarch - or Arrowroot flour
Vegan peanut butter caramel
- ¼ cup Maple Syrup
- ¼ cup Coconut Oil - use refined coconut oil to avoid coconut flavor!
- 3 tablespoons Peanut Butter (Unsalted) - or almond butter
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350°F (180°C). Line an 8-inch x 8-inch baking pan with parchment paper. Set aside.
- In a large mixing bowl, combine all the crust ingredients: oat flour, rolled oats, maple syrup, melted coconut oil, salt, and vanilla.
- Squeeze the batter with your hands to bring all the ingredients in contact and create a dough that sticks together. If too dry (may happen if you are using a coarse oat flour), add 1-2 tablespoons of water, add one at a time until the dough is soft and sticks together.
- Press roughly 1 cup + 2/3 cup of the dough all over the baking dish, using a spatula to smoothen the dough and making sure there is no hole left. Set aside leftover dough in a small mixing bowl in the fridge. It looks small but will be enough to finely crumble on top of the bar.
- Place the pan in the fridge while you make the apple filling.
Apple filling
- In a small saucepan, add the sliced apples, maple syrup, orange juice (or water), cinnamon, nutmeg.
- Cook for 2-3 minutes on medium heat, cover the saucepan, and stir often. Bubbles should form on the side of the pan.
- Stir in cornstarch and keep cooking on low heat for 2 minutes, stirring all the time to prevent the apples from burning. It should slightly thicken.
- Pour the apple filling on top of the prepared crust, then use the remaining dough to crumble all other the bar.
- Bake the bar for 35 minutes or until crispy on top and golden.
Peanut butter caramel
- Meanwhile, make the caramel. In a small saucepan, melt coconut oil with maple syrup and peanut butter over low-medium heat.
- Stir constantly until melted and combined and it looks like a caramel sauce.
- Set aside in a bowl or jar to cool and store at room temperature for up to 1 week in a sealed glass mason jar. If it becomes too thick to your liking, rewarm in the microwave for 20 seconds or in a saucepan before serving.
Cool the bars
- Remove the bars from the oven and cool in the pan 10 minutes before transferring onto a cooling rack.
- Cool for 3 hours or until it reaches room temperature before slicing into 16 bars. Waiting will prevent the bar from crumbling and the filling will set perfectly.
Serve and store
- Serve bar with a drizzle of caramel.
- Store the bars in the fridge in an airtight container for up to 1 week. Otherwise, freeze and defrost the day before breakfast.
These were absolutely incredible!!! I was looking for a healthy Apple “dessert” but always would come across apple breakfast recipes and they just weren’t satisfying or sweet enough. This one is a keeper! It tasted like apple crisp in bar form and I loved it! When making my apple mixture I added more Apple pie spice and a tablespoon or two of butter and simmered for about 15 minutes to make sure the apples were soft before I baked them because I like a softer apple filling. I also added more crumb to the topping but it really didn’t need it. I decided to use my date caramel for the drizzle but I will definitely try yours next time! Thank you so much for this. I was tired of wasting ingredients on recipes that were not very good. This one was a winner!!!
I noticed the note at the bottom about replacing chia seeds with flaxmeal; however, I don’t see chia seeds listed in the ingredients. Are they supposed to be included?
Sorry for that mistake, there is no chia seeds or flaxseed needed in this recipe