To sweeten up your day, here’s a short and simple recipe on how to make apple bars. These apple bars have a serving size of eight people. The preparation time for this recipe is 45 minutes while the baking time is 40-45 minutes. Overall, the recipe takes around an hour and a half to make.

To explain, apple bars are basically apple pies but placed in a rectangular baking dish. Instead of being sliced into pie slices, apple bars are cut into square pieces. 

Ingredients:

For the crust and topping:

• 2 cups all purpose flour
• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• ½ cup quick cooked oats 
• ¾ cup melted butter 
• ⅔ cup granulated sugar

For the apple filling:

• 3 tablespoons of cornstarch
• 1 ¼ cups cold water 
• 4 cups diced, peeled apples (around 4 medium-sized apples)
• 1 teaspoon of cinnamon 
• 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract 

Directions:

Step One:

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

Step Two:

First, melt the butter in the microwave for 50 seconds. Then, put the melted butter, all purpose flour, brown sugar, cooked oats and granulated sugar into the mixer. Blend until you get your crumbly crust and topping.

Step Three:

Set aside the crust and topping in a bowl for later.

Step Four:

Peel the apples then dice them up on a chopping board. For this recipe, I used four fuji apples.

Step Five:

Once you’re done with dicing up the apples, set them aside in a separate bowl.

Step Six:

In a medium saucepan, bring the cold water and cornstarch to a boil. Once boiled, turn off the eye so that the mixture will cool down and eventually thicken.

Step Seven:

Stir in the diced apples, cinnamon and vanilla extract into the water and cornstarch mixture. Set aside for later.

Step Eight:

Take the crust and topping mixture in the bowl from the second step. Get around ¾ of the mixture and press it down onto the baking dish. For the apple bars, I used an 8×8 baking dish.

Step Nine:

Once the base is formed, pour in the apple filling into the baking dish.

Step Ten:

Place the last ¼ of the topping on the apple filling.

Step Eleven:

Bake the apple bars for 40-45 minutes at 350 degrees. Afterwards, take them out of the oven and enjoy. 

Step Twelve:

To serve, you can slice them into squares and eat as is or even serve them with ice cream.