These Salted Caramel Apple Bars are made with brown butter and have layers of salted caramel and apple pie filling that make these bars so gooey and rich!
Fall is just around the corner, and it's the perfect time to start baking all your fall favorites, from cakes, cookies, to these Salted Caramel Apple Bars using my homemade caramel sauce. They are based off my Caramel Oatmeal Bars, but instead of chocolate, we fill the center with diced spiced apples, giving them an apple pie feel! So forget the pie crust, and make these easy Apple Pie Bars!
Why You'll Love this Recipe
- Brown Butter: this Salted Caramel Apple Bars recipe is absolutely elevated with the addition of brown butter. Gives it such a delicious nutty flavor.
- Fall flavors: The apple along with the cinnamon and nutmeg, as well as the nutty flavors from the brown butter make the perfect fall dessert.
- Easy: It's a pretty easy recipe and can be whipped up in less than an hour. You'll need to allow it to cool, but it's not hard at all!
Jump to:
Ingredients You'll Need
- Butter: For this Salted Caramel Apple Bars recipe, I use brown butter, which is melting the butter, than continuing to cook it to brown. This gives the bars a rich and nutty flavor.
- Flour: All purpose flour works great here. You'll also need it for the filling.
- Quick oats: I only ever have quick oats on hand so all my recipes use that. In a pinch, you can use old fashion oats and just pulse it a few times in the food processor.
- Brown sugar: These bars use all brown sugar, which cuts down on the sweetness a little, especially since we're adding sweetness with the caramel sauce and apple filling.
- Granulated sugar: A little sugar added to the apple pie filling.
- Egg: One egg for binding.
- Vanilla extract: Flavor galore!
- Baking powder: We need a bit of a lift, so leavening is important.
- Salt: Balances sweetness and for flavor.
- Apples: I use honeycrisp, but you can use whatever apples you like for your apple crisp or apple pie.
- Spices: Cinnamon and nutmeg for the perfect fall spices.
- Caramel sauce: I highly recommend making your own homemade caramel sauce and I have a wonderful recipe, but you can use store-bought as well.
See recipe card for quantities.
How to Make Salted Caramel Apple Bars
Steps to make brown butter
- Melt butter in a medium sauce pan on medium heat. Stir the butter to make sure it melts evenly. Once the butter is completely melted, it will start to foam up. Continue stirring the butter. As it cooks, it will start to change into a deeper color. This could take 6-8 minutes.
- You'll start to notice a nutty aroma and the butter will begin to have brown specs at the bottom of the pan.
- The entire process of browning butter from start to finish should not take more than 10 minutes on medium heat.
- Once butter is browned, pour it into a heat proof bowl and set it aside to cool for about 5 or 10 minutes.
Steps to make Salted Caramel Apple Bars
- Wet Ingredients: In a medium bowl, add (slightly cooled) brown butter and brown sugar and mix using a spatula. Add the egg and vanilla extract and mix.
- Dry Ingredients: Add the flour, quick oats, salt, and baking powder and mix.
- Spread in pan: Place ⅔ of the dough into the bottom of an 8x8 pan and spread it out completely.
- First bake: Bake for 13 minutes, then allow to cool while prepping apples.
- Prep Apples: Dice the apples, then mix together with sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and flour.
- Layer: Add the apples to the baked crust, then drizzle the caramel sauce on top.
- Add remaining dough: Take the remaining dough and add it to the top of the caramel. Just flatten each piece a little with your fingers and place them all around. It won't cover the entire pan, but that's ok.
- Second bake: Place back in the oven for 30-35 minutes until the top is golden brown and the caramel is bubbly.
- Cool: Remove from the oven and cool for at least 2 hours before slicing and enjoying.
Hint: Let the brown butter cool before adding the brown sugar and egg, otherwise the egg could scramble.
Substitutions
- Apples: Feel free to use any of your favorite apple in this recipe. I regularly buy honeycrisp to eat so it's what I have on hand most of the time, but use your favorite baking apple, or a combination.
- Caramel: I love adding homemade caramel sauce, but store-bought works too.
Variations to Try
- Nuts: Pecans or walnuts would be perfect in this recipe!
- Spices: You can experiment with more warm spices, like cloves, all spice, and ginger.
Storage
Storing: They keep well for 4-5 days at room temperature in an airtight container or ziploc bag.
Freezing: You can freeze them tightly wrapped for a few months.
Pro Tips
Measure Ingredients Correctly: As always, with any recipe, use a kitchen scale, as it is the best form of measuring your ingredients. If you don't have a kitchen scale, fluff your flour, scoop flour with a spoon into a measuring cup and level off.
Don't burn the brown butter: Once the brown butter starts to pop, foam, and form specs at the bottom of the pan, remove it. Otherwise you could burn it and it will end up tasting bitter.
Don't over mix: Using a spatula instead of a hand mixer reduces the chances of overmixing, but once your ingredients come together, stop mixing.
Don't over bake: Take out the bars at 13 minutes on the first bake, and start checking at 30 minutes on the second bake.
Cool completely: Make sure you let the bars cool completely. A safe timeframe is about 2-3 hours. Otherwise when you go to cut them, it will be a mess.
Parchment paper: To avoid sticking, make sure to line the pan with parchment paper.
FAQ
Brown butter instead of regular or melted butter creates a deep and nutty flavor that gives off notes of caramel.
You can, but I suggest pulsing it a few times in the food processor to get it to more of a quick oats texture and consistency.
If you don't want to make your own, you can buy the caramel candies and melt them down with some heavy cream until you get a nice caramel consistency. Or buy caramel in a jar, but it might be a little too thin.
More Fall Recipes to Try:
- Banana Caramel Cake
- Caramel Spice Cake
- Caramel Oatmeal Bars
- Chocolate Chip Banana Bundt Cake
- Spiced Banana Cake
📖 Recipe Card
Salted Caramel Apple Bars
Ingredients
Crust and topping
- 11 tablespoon (155g) unsalted butter
- ¾ cup (150g) brown sugar, packed light or dark
- 1 large egg room temperature
- 1½ teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 cup (95g) quick oats
- 1 cup (120g) all purpose flour
- ½ teaspoon baking powder
- ½ teaspoon salt
Salted Caramel Apple Filling
- 2 cups diced apples about 2 apples (I used honeycrisp)
- ¼ cup (50g) granulated sugar
- 2 tablespoon all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- ⅛ teaspoon nutmeg
- ½ cup caramel sauce see recipe
Instructions
- Caramel sauce: Make at least an hour ahead.
- Preheat the oven to 350℉ and a line an 8x8 baking pan with parchment paper and set aside.
For the Brown Butter
- Melt butter in a medium sauce pan on medium heat. Stir the butter to make sure it melts evenly. Once the butter is completely melted, it will start to foam up. Continue stirring the butter. As it cooks, it will start to change into a deeper color. This could take 6-8 minutes.You'll start to notice a nutty aroma and the butter will begin to have brown specs at the bottom of the pan. The entire process of browning butter from start to finish should not take more than 10 minutes on medium heat.
- Once butter is browned, pour it into a heat proof bowl and set it aside to cool for about 5 or 10 minutes.
Crust and Topping
- Wet Ingredients: In a medium bowl, add (slightly cooled) brown butter and brown sugar and mix using a spatula. Add the egg and vanilla extract and mix.
- Dry Ingredients: Add the flour, quick oats, salt, and baking powder and mix.
- Spread in pan: Place ⅔ of the dough into the bottom of an 8x8 pan and spread it out completely.
- First bake: Bake for 13 minutes, then allow to cool while prepping apples.
- Prep Apples: Dice the apples, then mix together with sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and flour.
- Layer: Add the apples to the baked crust, then drizzle the caramel sauce on top.
- Add remaining dough: Take the remaining dough and add it to the top of the caramel. Just flatten each piece a little with your fingers and place them all around. It won't cover the entire pan, but that's ok.
- Second bake: Place back in the oven for 30-35 minutes until the top is golden brown and the caramel is bubbly.
- Cool: Remove from the oven and cool for at least 2 hours before slicing and enjoying.
- Top with sea salt, vanilla ice cream, and caramel sauce.
Hilary says
These are the perfect fall dessert. As always, the flavors are well balanced; not too sweet, not too salty. The texture is just right and the apples aren’t overpowering. It would be a great dessert around the holidays for anyone wanting to break away from a basic apple pie. I love the oats!
Hakima says
So happy you tried this recipe and loved it! I love apples in the fall, and baking with them is so fun and cozy! Thank you for the lovely review. 🙂
Katie JOHNSON says
Hi Hakima! I am so excited to try this. Do you know if any adjustments need to be made for high altitude?
Thanks so much!
Hakima says
Hi Katie. I've never baked at high altitude, so I can't say if any of my recipes would need adjustments. If you give it a try, I'd love some feedback.