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These Gluten-Free Cranberry Crumb Bars use leftover cranberry sauce to make an irresistible refined sugar-free and vegan dessert. The crumb mixture doubles as the crust and crumb topping! Ready in less than an hour.
Happy day-after-Thanksgiving! Hope all of you had an amazing day full of family, love, and especially food. As much as I love to spend my time baking and cooking, even intricate, time-consuming desserts and (occasionally) meals, I’m always amazed by how quickly something that I spent hours and hours on can be eaten. Hours of work disappeared into people’s mouths.
We spend even more time prepping for Thanksgiving, because, besides just the actual cooking and baking that goes on, we have to spend a whole bunch of time planning out the meal, coordinating with family, grocery shopping, and getting everything else in order for the big day.
Thankfully, on Thanksgiving, there is usually soooo much food that we’re all inundated with leftovers. This is great, because it means you get to enjoy the fruits of your labor time and time again. I’m all for the day-after-Thanksgiving turkey sandwiches, but I always want to do something a bit different with my leftovers.
Naturally, after I made this Paleo Cranberry Sauce in prep for Thanksgiving, I had to bake it into something. The first thing that came to mind was the Peanut Butter & Jelly Crumb Bars I made earlier this year. I adjusted the recipe a bit to get rid of the oats and replaced the peanut butter and jelly filling with my homemade cranberry sauce.
The resulting gluten-free cranberry crumb bars are everything I hoped they would be! A crispy, crumbly crust, sweetened just enough to balance out the tart cranberry sauce. Because I used a homemade cranberry sauce that was chunky and full of orange zest and spices, the filling had tons of texture and flavor.
How to make the almond flour crust
The crust uses a mix of almond flour and coconut flour. The coconut flour is important because it’s ultra-absorbent, and it helps hold the bars together.
To sweeten, we use a combination of coconut sugar and maple syrup. The maple syrup is needed to bind and sweeten, but too much and the dough would be sticky. It did need more sweetness to balance out the tart cranberry sauce though, so I added coconut sugar as well.
The result is the perfect balance of sweet and tart. If you have a sweeter cranberry sauce and want to cut back on one of the sweeteners, I would cut down on the coconut sugar, not the maple syrup, as it’s needed to help hold the crust together.
I know you’ve been wondering what to do with the cranberry sauce leftovers in your fridge, and now you can enjoy the slightly more guilt-free treat post-Thanksgiving. Enjoy, and hope you all had a wonderful and happy Thanksgiving! :)
Want more easy cranberry recipes?
Homemade Healthy Cranberry Bliss Bars
These Homemade Cranberry Bliss Bars are a homemade take on the Starbucks’ holiday favorite! These cakey blondies are chewy and loaded with cranberry, orange, and white chocolate flavors. They’re gluten free, paleo and vegan.
Chewy Gluten-Free Cranberry Pecan Chocolate Chip Cookies
Meet your new favorite cranberry pecan chocolate chip cookies! Perfectly crisp edges mixed with gooey chocolate chips and toasted pecans! The best homemade chocolate chip cookies to make for the holidays. Gluten-free, paleo, and vegan-friendly!
Gluten-Free Vegan Cranberry Orange Scones
These Gluten-Free Vegan Cranberry Orange Scones will be your new favorite vegan breakfast. This easy scone recipe is made with fresh and dried cranberries, fresh orange juice and zest, and a simple orange glaze for maximum flavor.
Gluten-Free Cranberry Crumb Bars
Ingredients
- 1¾ 7 oz. cups almond flour
- 1 tablespoon coconut flour
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon cinnamon
- ¼ cup coconut sugar
- ½ cup coconut oil, solid at room temperature
- ¼ cup maple syrup
- ½ cup cranberry sauce, see Notes
- ¼ cup chopped walnuts, optional
Equipment
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350°F. Line an 8×8-inch pan with parchment paper or foil and grease lightly.
- In large bowl, combine the almond flour, coconut flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and coconut sugar. Whisk to combine. Add the coconut oil and using a pastry cutter or two forks, work the coconut oil into the dry ingredients until the coconut oil is in little bits. Add the maple syrup and toss to combine until the mixture stick together.
- Reserve 3/4 cup of crumb mixture for the topping. Press remaining crumb mixture evenly into the bottom of greased pan. Bake at 350°F for 10 minutes.
- Remove partially baked crust from the oven. Spread cranberry sauce over the crust. Top with remaining crumb mixture and if desired, chopped walnuts.
- Return to oven and bake for another 25-30 minutes or until bubbling and lightly browned. Let cool completely before cutting into 16 squares.
These bars are absolutely gorgeous, Rachel! I love that I can use my leftover cranberry sauce in these bars. And that crumb topping is just calling my name! Yum!
I’m so glad you had a wonderful Thanksgiving, Rachel! These cranberry crumb bars are SO pretty! This has to be the best way to use up leftover cranberry sauce!! Gimme Gimme! Cheers, my dear!
Ohh these look really interesting! I love recipes where you get great taste, great texture and that look bright and colourful like this too.
The recipe says 1/4 maple syrup. 1/4 what? 1/4 cup?
Yes, 1/4 cup! Thanks for catching that – it’s fixed now.
Dear Bakerita,
These bars are amazing and you should win an award.
-Kate
I’m so happy you loved them, Kate!
Am making a batch tonite! & am i reading correctly, that one can skip the Coco sugar? Finally, How long do they keep for? Thanks again for the recipe!
Hi Andrea, I’d only recommend skipping the coconut sugar if your cranberry sauce is on the sweet side. If it’s tart, you’ll want the sweetness to balance it out. They’ll keep in the fridge for 4-5 days. Enjoy! :)
Hi- do you think I could sub pecan or walnut flour for almond? :)
Yes, either should work as long as it’s a fine flour :) enjoy!
I can’t use ANY oil.
Any sub for that coconut oil??
You could try using coconut butter!
These turned out so good! I didn’t have enough coconut oil so just used grass fed butter and they were perfect. I’ve been eating them for breakfast every morning with coffee. Totally worth it!
I made these bars today. I found them really tastey! I’d made another bloggers’ recipe that was coconut flour based and the almond flour went over much better, IMHO. I did find the result to come out quite crumbly, however. I ended up serving it over vanilla ice cream like a crumble. I was wondering if adding an egg to the recipe with the maple syrup would help this? I found the base was hard and stuck together well in some parts of the pan, but other parts it just crumbled apart and didn’t hold together at all. Not sure if anyone else found this. Would make again but if you get this comment and have an opinion about the egg, would love to hear it!
Hi Aja, an egg might help hold things together! That’s odd that some parts were firm and others weren’t. These definitely hold better together after being refrigerated!