Vegan Cranberry Oatmeal Crumble Bars

Ingredient Notes

• Cranberries: This recipe calls for whole frozen or fresh cranberries. Do not use dried cranberries.
• Chia seeds: Chia seeds are needed to thicken the cranberry jam. If you’re not using chia seeds, you can swap them for 1 tbsp cornstarch.
• Flour: You can use all-purpose flour, whole wheat flour or white whole wheat flour.
• Sweetener: I used organic cane sugar in this recipe but any kind of dry granular sweeteners, such as brown sugar, coconut sugar, demerara or turbinado sugar works. To reduce the sugar in the recipe, you could use monk fruit sweetener.
• Oats: Rolled oats (old fashioned oats) are best here but you could use quick oats in a pinch.
• Maple Syrup: Since the cranberries are quite tart, a little sweetness helps to balance them out. You can use maple syrup or any sugar.
• Coconut Oil: This is needed for the oatmeal crust and crumble layers. It can be substituted with cold butter.

Please see the full ingredient list with measurements in the recipe card at the end of the post.

Variations

• Orange: Substitute orange juice for the lemon juice for a variation. 1-2 tsp orange zest can also be added for extra flavour.
• Prepared Jam: For convenience, you can skip the cranberry jam portion of the recipe and use store-bought prepared cranberry sauce or even leftover cranberry sauce instead.
• Glaze: For an extra treat, prepare the glaze recipe from this Vegan Olive Oil Cake and drizzle over the bars after baking.
• Gluten-Free Option: Use the almond flour crust from these Vegan Blueberry Crumble Bars or the gluten-free flour crust from these Strawberry Oatmeal Bars.
• Blueberry Bars: This Berry Chia Seed Jam would also be good in these bars instead of cranberry.

Step-by-Step Instructions

Step 1: Add the cranberries, maple syrup, lemon and chia seeds to a small saucepan.

Step 2: Bring to a gentle boil over medium heat while stirring then reduce to low and cook for 6-7 minutes while mashing until it’s thick with a jam-lick consistency. Remove from the heat.

At this point, preheat the oven to 350 F and prepare a baking pan with a light coating of butter, oil or cooking spray or line with parchment paper.

Step 3: Add the dry ingredients, the oats, flour, baking powder, salt and sugar, to a large bowl and mix to combine and break up any clumps.

Step 4: Add the wet ingredients, the softened coconut oil, lemon juice and non-dairy milk, starting with 3 tbsp, to the bowl. Mix it up into a crumbly dough, adding more almond milk as needed until you can press the dough together in your fingers.

The consistency should be crumbly but moist enough to start sticking together. It shouldn’t be overly wet or as wet as batter or cookie dough.

Step 5: Firmly press 2/3 of the oat mixture into the bottom of the pan. Spread with the cranberry jam.

Step 6: Sprinkle remaining crumble mixture over the jam layer.

Step 7: Bake the bars for 35 minutes in the preheated oven until golden brown on top then let them cool completely in the pan. Letting them cool is important otherwise they’ll be crumbly.

Once cooled, if you used parchment paper, you can lift them out of the pan, if not, slice them in the pan and carefully remove them one by one with a fork or small spatula.