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A sweet tangy mix of strawberries + raspberries cooked till jammy then layered between a buttery crust and golden crumble. Vegan, gluten-free, paleo option!

This recipe combines three of my favorite things:

1. the best summer fruit (a.k.a. BERRIES)
2. streusel-y topping situations
3. collabing with one of my favorite fellow recipe creators and humans, Gina from Healthy Little Vittles!

We’ve been trying to make another collab happen for months now. Not leaving the house has made work life more hectic on both sides it seems (there also may have been a cinnamon swirl loaf attempt in there somewhere that I tested like 8 times and then eventually gave up…but we don’t need to mention that), so it took us a minute to make it work.

But all that too-busy-ness has carried us right into berry season and the creation of these beautiful Berry Crumble Bars, so maybe it’s all for the best anyways.

The Crust/Crumble

I’m just gonna go ahead and assume you’re at least a little lazy too (we’ll blame quarantine because we can right now) and don’t want to make a crust and whole separate crumb topping, correct?

Perfect. Thank you. I feel much less alone now.

So our one-and-done crustcrumble is sticky enough to hold as a crust and crumbly enough to grace the top of the bars in the most spectacularly streusel-like way. It is moist and sweet, lightly spiced, and honestly a little TOO tasty straight out of the bowl pre-baking…it’s a problem.

It’s naturally almost grain-free, but I did throw some oats in there for extra texture. If you want to make it grain-free, swap in sliced almonds instead or just skip that part.

The Berry Filling

This is where things get reeeeeeeeal jammy. Not like music “jams” jammy (although if you are not dancing while baking what are you even doing?), but like we’re basically making homemade sweet sticky jam on the stove in less than 10 minutes jammy.

You could make this recipe a dozen different ways with different combinations of berries, but we used strawberries and raspberries. Blueberries would be amazing. A mix of all three would be delish. Throw in some blackberries if ya got em. Maybe even get wild and let cherries join the party. See possibilities = ENDLESS.

The important things are fruit, a little sugar, a little starch to thicken, lemon for some tang, and cooking/stirring till thick. For me it took about 7-8 minutes, but it may take more/less time depending on what level of heat you’re cooking on and if you use fresh vs frozen berries (frozen tend to release more liquid).

I recommend making the filling first so it has time to cool while you make the crust/crumble. Even though I discussed that part first in the post which is mildly confusing. My bad.

There are two ways to go when it comes to serving: warm with a spoon or chilled and sliced. Try to slice them hot and they will just fall apart. So if you don’t want to wait, forget the “bars” part and just scoop that good stuff into a bowl, plop some ice cream on top, and get in there. But if you chill them for a few hours (4 minimum although I recommend overnight), they will slice into sweet little squares. Or split the pan down the middle and do a bit of both!

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