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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.
Just made these today and we really like them. I did not have leftover cranberry sauce so I made yours just for the occasion. I haven’t tried them chilled yet but at room temp they are almost the consistency of a blonde. I’m wondering if they would work with less oil? Mostly because I want to eat the whole pan. Bonus is that I have cranberry sauce ready for Thanksgiving!
So glad you’re enjoying them, Heather! You could probably cut back the oil to 1/3 cup without any issues :) thanks for the feedback!
Refined or unrefined coconut oil?
Either is fine! If you don’t want coconut flavor, use refined.
Your bars sound so yummy! I am allergic to nuts. Is there any other type of GL flour I can use in this recipe?
Hi Paula, oat flour should work well!
I’m hesitant to include a star rating since I made so many mistakes while making these bars. First off, I accidentally doubled the sugar. Next, my cranberry sauce was straight from the refrigerator and very thick, so when I plopped it all in the middle I wasn’t able to get it to spread very much. So, I added a ton more cranberry sauce so that it was spread evenly — although much thicker than intended — to the edges. Even with all of my errors, however, they’re still really tasty. They look a bit wonky and are way sweeter than I’m used to, but I’m not going to get sick of them. I can’t have citrus, so my cranberry sauce was strictly cranberries, coconut sugar and water, so I felt as though it would need a bit more flavor, so I added a bit of cardamom, clove and ginger to the dough, which I though was rather nice. If I have left over cranberry sauce next year, I’ll try it again — but maybe pay a little more attention next time.
Thanks for the explanation, Daryl – sorry you had some issues, but I’m glad you were able to make it work and are enjoying them! Thanks for sharing your feedback.
Isit possible to remove maple syrup from the recipe? and can i use dried cranberries instead or make my own raspberry sauce to include in the recipe?
Hi Michelle, I wouldn’t recommend dried cranberries here, but you could use a different sauce in place of the cranberry sauce. I wouldn’t recommend getting rid of the maple syrup, as it helps hold the crust together in this recipe. If you wanted to reduce sugar, you can leave out the coconut sugar.
I really enjoyed the taste of this, but my crust basically fell apart. It just didn’t get “crumbly” in the step where you add coconut oil. Was I supposed to melt it first?
I also used cassava flour which could have made a difference! My son is sensitive to almonds.
I’ll make this again and try adding more coconut oil until it is stickier. Thank you!
Hi Mia, the cassava flour is definitely the culprit here! It’s much more absorbent than almond flour, so you’d need a lot more coconut oil to get it to stick together.