Oatmeal Cherry Bars

These oatmeal cherry bars are packed with fresh cherry flavor and a crumbly buttery oatmeal base and topping. Use frozen cherries to save money and eat them year round.

[This recipe was originally posted in August 2020. It has been updated with new cooking instructions, expert tips, FAQ, and ways to repurpose/use up ingredients]

These oatmeal cherry bars are similar to Starbucks Michigan cherry bars. They're a fresh, delicious, and easy summer dessert, especially since they take about 15 minutes to prep, and 30 to bake. Use frozen cherries to save money.

If you need to use up other frozen berries, you can use whatever you have instead of the cherries.

These cherry oatmeal bars are great as is, or served with ice cream or yogurt for a delicious dessert, snack, or even fun summer breakfast.

Single serving desserts are great, but getting a couple servings out of a dessert is great too.

Not in the mood for cherry bars? How about this single serving Skillet Peach Crisp, Peach Cobbler, Chocolate Covered Strawberries, or Oreo Blueberry Ice Cream?

Ingredients

Scroll down to the oatmeal cherry bars recipe card for the amounts of each ingredient, but here's a quick visual + description of what's in this recipe.

• Cherries: Frozen cherries are easy, less expensive, and available year round. You can use fresh cherries too. I like using cherries vs cherry pie filling because they are more tart and fresh tasting.
• Water: It helps create a nice thick filling when cooking the cherries and other ingredients down.
• White Sugar: This combo adds nice sweet flavor without competing with the cherry filling, it's also necessary to get a nice, thick filling.
• Corn Starch: Thickens your cherry filling. It's necessary for a gooey cherry filling in your oatmeal cherry bars.
• Lemon Juice: Adds some nice tartness to the cherry filling, makes it taste light and refreshing.
• Salt: Brings out the flavors in the crust, topping, and filling.
• Whole Wheat Flour: I like the slight nutty flavor of whole wheat flour in these bars. But you can use all purpose flour if you have it.
• Old Fashioned/Rolled Oats: adds nice texture and flavor to both the crust and topping in these cherry oatmeal crumble bars.
• Dark Brown Sugar: dark brown sugar has a bit more molasses than light brown sugar does. It adds a nice deep flavor to the crust/topping
• Baking Powder: Just a sprinkle helps your crust rise a bit to be flaky and not too dense.
• Cold Butter: key to a flaky crust and crumbly topping for your oatmeal cherry bars.

Instructions

Scroll down to the recipe card for more detailed instructions. Here's a quick overview + photos to see how to make this recipe in general.

1. Make cherry filling. The first step to make these oatmeal cherry bars is the cherry filling. Cook cherry filling ingredients in pot, stirring occasionally until sauce thickens (5-8 minutes). Refrigerate to cool.

2. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

3. Prepare Oatmeal Mixture. This will be used for the base and for the topping. Mix together whole wheat flour, old fashioned rolled oats, dark brown sugar, baking powder and salt to large mixing bowl.

4. Cut cold butter chunks into oatmeal mixture.

5. Assemble oatmeal cherry bars. Press ½ of flour/oatmeal mixture into parchment lined 8x8 metal baking pan. Pour cooled cherry mixture over base. Spread out. Sprinkle remaining oat topping.

4. Bake oatmeal cherry bars for 20-30 minutes, or until cherry filling is bubbling and topping is golden brown. Remove and cool before serving. Eat as is or serve with vanilla ice cream or yogurt.

Storage/Reheating Tips

Store in airtight container on counter for up to about 7 days. Or until bars start to smell funny. They should last longer in the fridge. Or freeze individual oatmeal cherry bars for a couple months.

Substitutions/Tips

• Swap frozen cherries for fresh pitted cherries in these oatmeal cherry bars if you have them. Add an additional tablespoon of water (or maybe more) if it gets too thick while cooking.
• Start with 1 T lemon juice. Add 1-2 additional tablespoons of lemon juice depending on how sweet your cherries are. If the filling is just a bit too tart, it's perfect. The buttery, sweet crust cuts some of the tartness of the filling.
• Swap whole wheat flour for all purpose flour if that's what you have.
• Swap light or regular brown sugar for of dark brown sugar. The dark brown sugar has more molasses in it than the others, and the flavor is great. But use what you have/can find.
• Use cold butter to get a slightly flaky crust.
• Other great add-ins: Chopped nuts, mixed berries (but you might need to adjust water, lemon, etc in filling).

FAQ

Other good summer dessert recipes:

• Oven S'Mores
• Single Serving Chocolate Chip Cookie
• Chocolate Covered Popcorn
• Small Peach Cobbler with Cake Mix
• Butterscotch Milkshake

How to repurpose

Crumble or chop up small and serve leftover oatmeal cherry bar over yogurt or vanilla ice cream.

What to do with leftover ingredients

When you're cooking for one, you often have leftover produce, cans of whatever ingredient, etc. Here are a couple ideas on how to use up the leftover ingredients. It'll help you save money by wasting fewer ingredients.

• Frozen cherries: add them to this Overnight Oatmeal recipe
• Lemon juice: use some in this Pan Seared Salmon with Summer Salad or Pan Seared Pork Chops

Did you make these oatmeal cherry bars? Leave me a comment & rating to share how they turned out!

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