Mmmm, mini apple crumble pies with no sugar and no flour! Sounds mouth-watering…but it actually is. These healthy mini apple pies are lower in sugar and made with a simple healthy oat crust and a simple, yet tasty cinnamon-y apple filling!

Making these simple healthy mini apple crumble cups does take a bit longer than we're comfortable with, but it’s worth it, because they’re SO tasty. And if you don’t want to spend that much time in the kitchen – just put the ingredients in a spring form and have one bigger apple pie instead.

It happened again.

We baked.

And this time we made these adorable healthy, high-fiber apple crumble mini pies.

And they’re really good.

Actually they’re notable. We're slowly starting to think we can bake.

Gone are the days when everything we baked tasted like old stinky socks.

The pictures don’t do them justice, because it was late when we took them so we didn’t have much natural light, but these apple crumble cups are sooo satisfying, oh our goodness.

We want to make these apple crumble cups every single day for the rest of our LIFE.

And if we had one hour for that daily – trust us we would do it.

And we would feel good about it, because aside from tasting absolutely divine, these are healthy.

There’s not even one ingredient that is bad for you or too fancy for us.

All just whole foods (aside from coconut oil) we all have at home.

How did these apple crumble pies get so healthy?

For these apple crumble mini pies we used:

only 1 Tbsp of honey to sweeten the whole thing instead of ½ cup sugar (if vegan use vegan liquid sweetener)
ground oats instead of white flour
coconut oil instead of butter or vegetable oils

Add a few more healthy ingredients, put everything in the oven, take it out and start a new life in a little place called taste bud heaven.

Incredibly delicate, crumbly, buttery and perfectly sweet.

And yet this is a dessert we never thought we'd make.

Why?

Well we hate apples.

And now you’re like: “Well we hate you!”

Let us explain.

Hating apples doesn’t mean we're a bad person… we just want to marry a doctor.

And if you can put two and two together you’d know that…

Apples have bad reputation, you know?

Snow White chocked on an apple and almost died.
Adam and Eve ate that apple and then the snake came out of nowhere looking for it, got mad, spit poison in their faces and told them she’ll sue…

What do all these real stories tell us:

Eat an apple a day and you won’t marry a doctor (you will probably never become one or work with one as well)
Eat an apple and you might die from chocking.
Eat an apple and you’ll get spit on and sued by a snake.

However, one bite of these tasty apple crumble mini pies and we forgot all these horrifying facts. We also forgot about our apple allergy (which is a real thing – but only for raw apples).

The toughest part…

The one thing that put us in a little bit of pain while making these apple crumble cups was spreading that dough in the muffin forms.

That took a while. Totally worth it, but just a little heads up!

You’ll need some radio on, patience and time. You can also try making the crumbles in a small springform cake tin – this will definitely save you some time. This way you will have one small crumble pie and not 9 adorable apple crumble mini pies.

We liked the idea of mini pies as they are the solid portion size, have no chance of falling apart and look cute. In case you use the springform cake tin for this recipe, you might need a little more filling, but a 3rd apple should do it.

The only “special” ingredient you might not have at home for this recipe is oat flour, but you can easily make it yourself.

You simply grind oats in your food processor or your coffee grinder if you don’t have a food processor.

We tried this with our mom’s 30-year old coffee grinder and it works perfectly – you can grind nuts, oats, everything in it – place, pulse and ready.

These mini apple crumble pies smell strong, but please be careful! Be sure not bite into one of the mini pies while it’s still hot! Guess who did that?

Apple crumble mini pies, healthy

Yield: 9
Prep: 30 minutes
Cook: 30 minutes

Ingredients

Crust + Crumble:

1 1/2 cups gluten-free oats, ground into flour
5 Tbsp coconut, melted
1 Tbsp honey or maple syrup
Additionally for the crust only: 5 Tbsp water

APPLE FILLING

2 sweet red apples, peeled and chopped small, about 1 1/2 cups
1 Tbsp coconut oil
1 tsp cinnamon

Additionally for Crumble topping

6 pecans, chopped coarsely + rest of the crust

Method

In your food processor or your blender combine all ingredients for the crust aside from water – ground oats, coconut oil and honey and pulse until crumbly.
Take 2 Tbps of the crumble and set aside in a bowl for the topping later. Add water 1 tbsp at a time to the rest of the mixture in your food processor. Then pulse again. The crumble should become a little less crumbly and should be able to stick together, but still crumble a little.
Sauté the apples in a small non-stick pan for 3-5 minutes with 1 tbsp coconut oil and cinnamon. Let cool off for 5-10 minutes while you're shaping the crust for the mini pies.
Line 9 muffin cups with parchment paper muffin liners. You’ll need 2 Tbsp of the crust mix per cup. Press that mixture starting from the middle of the cup and work your way up, pressing so that the cups are half-full (hey, we’re optimists here!). Press the crust well, it should start looking like the crust for a cheesecake or a tartelette.
Preheat the oven to 350F/180C.
Fill the crumble cups with the sautéed apples - it takes approximately 1 Tbsp per cup + some. Start by adding 1 Tbsp per cup and then add more if needed (do not overfill, as at some point the crust might not handle the weight of the apples).
Now let’s make the topping. That’s easy, remember the 2 Tbsp crust mix you set aside. Take it, chop some pecans and throw them into the same bowl, mix together. Then place mixture, pressing it with your fingers as to shape crumbs on top of the apple filling.
Bake at 180°C/350 °F for about 25-30 minutes or until golden.
Let cool off a little (don’t want you to burn your tongue with the apple filling) and then eat.
The mini apple pies will be pretty crumbly and delicate when they come out of the oven. They will firm up and become more "sturdy" when you leave them in the fridge for 3-4 hours.
The mini pies taste great cold and warm, but we like them best when they’re warm. So, we recommend even the next day – warm them up a little bit before enjoying. Also, top with some yogurt or for the vegan version with whipped coconut cream.