Easy Healthy Chocolate Peanut Butter Oatmeal Bars

Do you ever wonder what the best snack is when feeling peckish? Look no further – these healthy Baked Chocolate Peanut Butter Oatmeal Bars are easy to make and offer an irresistibly delicious taste that will leave your taste buds tickled. Combining the creamy richness of peanut butter and the sweetness of chocolate and bananas makes these bars a dreamy and decadent treat while still being nutritious!

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These delicious and healthy banana peanut oatmeal bars are perfect for a quick snack or breakfast on the go, made with wholesome ingredients and no added sugar. The recipe is dairy-free and gluten-free so that the whole family can enjoy it.

These chunky bars are easily customizable! For example, you can use any type of nut butter or seed butter that you prefer.

Oatmeal bars are a delicious and healthy snack option for vegans who want something sweet and satisfying. Made with oats, peanut butter, maple syrup, and vegan dark chocolate chips, these bars are sure to satisfy your sweet tooth cravings.

We like to have them as a simple snack while we sip on tea or as a quick breakfast with a cup of pumpkin spice latte or vegan golden milk.

Jump to:

• 🧾 Ingredients
• 🔪 Instructions
• 🍶 Substitutions
• 📖  Variations
• 💡 Top tip
• 📚 More oatmeal recipes
• 🍽 Equipment
• 🥡 Storage
• ❓ FAQ
• 📋 Recipe
• 🌡️ Food safety
• 💬 Reviews and Comments

🧾 Ingredients

This baked peanut butter oatmeal is made with just a few delicious ingredients.

• Gluten-free Old-fashioned oats - add texture fiber, iron, and zinc to these oatmeal bars.
• Raw cocoa - brings color and flavor to an oatmeal bar. If you use vegan chocolate chips, you can skip it, but remember that raw cacao brings not only flavor but also great properties. The cocoanut is an excellent source of antioxidants, iron, and magnesium and provides vitamins B1, C, and E. Its consumption helps improve mental clarity, reduce fatigue and stress levels, provide energy, and help with digestive problems such as constipation.
• Creamy peanut butter - adds a nutty, creamy taste with protein and healthy fats.
• Ripe bananas - naturally sweeten the bars and add moisture.
• Pure maple syrup - increases the sweetness, adds autumn flavors, and is a great natural binding agent.

Optional ingredients

• Baking powder - a rising agent made from cream of tartar, bicarbonate of soda, and usually cornflour - is essential for making cakes and other baked goods light and fluffy. It's also great for adding body to pancakes and muffins. Using a pinch on this recipe helps to make the bars chewy. If you prefer a dense bar, you can skip it.
• Ground cinnamon - imbues the bars with a warm flavor.
• Vegan dark chocolate chips - yum! Add another layer of deliciousness with melty and chewy textures.
• Fine sea salt - helps to balance the flavor of a dish and brings out the natural sweetness in all the ingredients.

See the recipe card for quantities.

🔪 Instructions

This creamy peanut butter-baked oatmeal involves three simple steps.

1. Measuring your ingredients.
2. Mixing everything.
3. Baking for a few minutes.

Hint: I like placing an extra piece of parchment paper on top before pressing.

Bake for 18-25 minutes until the edges are golden brown.

Hint: to make the best out of your ingredients' nutritional benefits, it is better to steam cauliflower than to boil it; otherwise, some of the nutrients will end up in the water.

🍶 Substitutions

• Rolled oats - instead of all old-fashioned, you can use steel-cut or quick oats. The texture will be more dense and less chunky.
• Natural Peanut butter - you can opt for almond butter or even sunflower seed butter. Cashew butter and hazelnut butter, similar to Nutella, are also great options. You can skip the optional sea salt in the recipe if you use salted nut butter. We love the peanut butter flavor of this recipe, and our second option is hazelnut and the third almond. Cashew butter has a much milder flavor but does the job.
• Vanilla extract - use almond extract instead.
• Vegan chocolate chips - you can replace them with raisins, gogi berries, or dried cranberries. they will make the bars chunkier and add a little bit of acidity. The final result is similar to that of a Cadbury's dried fruit and raisins chocolate candy bar.
• Ground cinnamon - feel free to replace it with nutmeg or a warm spice-like pumpkin pie mix.
• Maple syrup - use agave syrup or brown sugar mixed in a tablespoon of melted coconut oil to keep the moisture syrup added. We also like using homemade date paste; just avoid using refined sugar.

Read on: brown sugar cinnamon oatmeal breakfast and our brown sugar candied walnuts.

📖  Variations

• Nuts - add chopped nuts, like almonds, cashews, or walnuts.
• Coconutty - add three tablespoons of shredded coconut into the oatmeal mixture, or add one tablespoon on top halfway through the baking process.
• More antioxidants - add two tablespoons of flax meal or chia seeds into the mixture.
• More bananas - add ½ cup of unmashed additional banana slices. Dried bananas work as well.

📚 More oatmeal recipes

If you like oatmeal as an option for a healthy breakfast or snack, you should try our tasty granola, the pumpkin spice granola, our homemade granola bars made with hazelnut butter, and the granola bars made with peanut butter.

If you like a bowl of creamy and warm goodness, this brown sugar cinnamon oatmeal is for you; otherwise, if you love meal-prepping your breakfast, you can make the oats and chia pudding, an oat milk smoothie with peanut butter, a lemon blueberry or pumpkin overnight oats.

🍽 Equipment

1. Baking pan- you can use any size, like 9" x 9", or 12" x 8". Just try to press the bars to reach a ½" inch thickness.
2. Bowl - to avoid making a mess and mix all of your ingredients in a single container.
3. Spatula - to mix and press the oatmeal mixture against the baking dish.
4. Parchment paper - to line baking pans or wrap food items - is an absolute must in my kitchen. It's great for making clean-up a breeze and keeping the delicate flavors of whatever I'm cooking intact. In addition to being easy to use, it's also environmentally friendly since it's made from natural materials such as manila hemp and cotton fibers.

Hint: you can use cooking spray or olive oil instead of parchment paper.

🥡 Storage

Store this and any baked oatmeal recipe using a BPA-free airtight container lined with parchment paper to keep them fresh for up to one week. Enjoy!

❓ FAQ

⭐ If you try this peanut butter oatmeal recipe, let us know! 💬 Leave a comment, rate it, and don't forget to tag us @ourplantbasedworld on Instagram. Cheers!

📋 Recipe