Gluten-free Healthy Breakfast Cookies made with peanut butter and old-fashioned oats. There is no flour, no butter, and no oil in these cookies which can be ready in about 20 minutes!
Cookies you can eat for breakfast!
Besides this Egg Skillet (or this Egg Wrap), I tend to love sweet instead of savory breakfasts. Gimme all the crepes, pancakes, or bread pudding and I’ll be happy as a clam (with a blissful sugar coma).
So naturally, if there is an excuse to eat cookies for breakfast, you know I’m all over that! And while these cookies do have a bit of sugar in them, they’re mainly made with good ingredients — honey, peanut butter, an egg, and old-fashioned oats. I mean, depending on how much sugar you add to your bowl of oatmeal, it may even have more sugar than these cookies 🙂 Or is that just me?…
Quick Tip
These Healthy Breakfast cookies are certainly not limited to breakfast; they make a great snack or afternoon pick-me-up.
Breakfast Cookies tips
Breakfast Cookies tips- Use a one-tablespoon measuring spoon to measure equal balls of dough so cookies bake evenly.
- Slightly flatten the dough balls: These cookies don’t spread much when baking so roll the dough balls wider instead of taller.
- Make sure to use creamy–not crunchy–peanut butter for best results. I recommend using a peanut butter that you love. If you like a spoonful of the peanut butter plain, you’ll love it in these healthy breakfast cookies.
- Do not over-bake: These cookies don’t take a whole lot of baking time and will go from perfectly cooked to burned quickly. These cookies continue to firm up after being baked as they sit and cool. You’ll know the cookies are done if they don’t look gooey, wet, or shiny on top at the end of the bake time.
Breakfast Cookies Variation ideas
- The chocolate and peanut butter chips do make these more of a dessert, so to make them healthier, try dark chocolate chips. Dark chocolate has lots of healthy fats and antioxidants among other benefits.
- Instead of adding chocolate chips, try raisins, dried cranberries, dried tart cherries, or nuts instead.
- Add a sprinkle of Maldon sea salt flakes to the tops of these cookies if you’re craving a salty-sweet treat.
More healthy baked goods:
- Healthy Pumpkin Cookies no refined sugar, no flour, butter, or oil
- Healthy Banana Muffins naturally sweetened
- No Bake Granola Bars with a chocolate drizzle
- Healthy No Bake Cookies with dark chocolate
- Healthy Applesauce Muffins made with Greek yogurt
Healthy Oatmeal Breakfast Cookies
Ingredients
- 1 cup creamy peanut butter*
- 2 tablespoons honey
- 4 tablespoons light brown sugar lightly packed
- 1/2 cup + 2 tablespoons old-fashioned oats
- 1/8 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 large egg
- 1/2 cup peanut butter chips + chocolate chips Nestle has this combo
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
- In a medium-sized bowl stir together the peanut butter, honey, and brown sugar. Do NOT warm up the peanut butter or the honey.
- Add in the oats, salt, baking soda, and vanilla extract. Stir well.
- In a separate bowl lightly beat the egg and then add it to the mixture.
- Stir in desired add-ins (I used a peanut butter and chocolate chip mixture), but you can use dark chocolate chips, raisins, craisins, peanuts, etc. to make these even healthier and more breakfast worthy.
- The mixture will be thick and hard to stir. Continue stirring until combined and then use a 1 tablespoon measuring spoon to measure balls of dough. Press and squeeze the dough tightly together into a ball and then flatten the ball to form a disc.
- Place the cookie dough discs onto a cookie sheet and bake for 6-8 minutes.
- Watch the cookies closely and remove when the bottom barely starts to brown even if they don't look completely done (they cook more as they cool). I burned a few cookies by not watching them - they look underdone and 30-60 seconds later they are burned! (TIP: I also found cooking smaller batches - like 6 on a tray worked the best)
- Remove and allow to cool completely.
Video
Recipe Notes
Gluten-free: For a gluten-free version, make sure oats are certified gluten free.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
I would prefer that people post after they actually try the cookies. That being said, I just made these and they are absolutely wonderful and so easy too! I used crunchy natural peanut butter and they turned out great.
So glad to hear you enjoyed these cookies! Thank you for the comment! 🙂
Out of curiosity how many calories per cookie? They are delicious
Thanks so much for this recipe! I have made it several times and it came out great every time. These are delicious AND quick to make.?
Yeah!! That is so great to hear! 🙂 Thanks for the comment!!
Could you grind the oatmeal into a flour? Would that help in holding the cookies together and to be less crumbly?
If you want you can, I haven’t ever done that and haven’t had a problem with them crumbling. If they are crumbly you may be packing in too many oats or under-measuring the peanut butter. Hope that helps 🙂
I made these, so delicious! I used agave instead of the brown sugar I didn’t have a problem with them being crumbly at all they were so moist and so yummy!
Do you grind the oats to make flour ? The pic doesn’t like oatmeal cookie texture.
Nope, no grinding needed 🙂
I usually don’t have time to sit down for breakfast during the week and was finding myself relying on really unhealthy and expensive breakfast options like (shudder) the fast-food drive-through picked up on the way to work and eaten in the car. (Please don’t judge me.)
I went online to find recipes for healthier breakfast choices on busy weekday mornings, and I stumbled on your blog! I’m so happy to have found it. The breakfast cookies are in the oven right now, but I found a bunch of other recipes while browsing that I can’t wait to try.
I’m always skeptical when it comes to “healthy breakfast cookies”…but these are FABULOUS! PLUS, they are only 139 calories each (count based of the ingredients and brands I specifically used, and 19 cookies)! Not to mention the are super filling (thank you, oats and PB)! I froze the batch so I can grab one to go on busy mornings. Thank you for this recipe!!
You are so welcome!! So glad to hear that you enjoyed them 🙂 And yes, it’s so nice they are filling thanks to that PB and the oats 🙂 Thanks for the comment!
So I saw your cookies and just wanted to give them a try immediately, I had one minor inconvenience: no eggs and all stores closed! Why all stores decided to close today, hey, I live in Belgium, you stop wondering at one point. But this was not going to sop me! (its rainy and I need comfort goodies for my tea!) so I looked up a vegan substitute, found it (1TBSP star + 2 TBSP water)… made the dough, didn’t have dark chocolate (except with ginger) so I was thinking what to pair them with (didn’t feel like putting raisins in) … while the cookie dough sat in the fridge I decided on the best PB pairing I could think of: PB&J of course!!! made a thumbprint, filled it up with raspberry jam, enclosed the dough and flattened them out a bit… baked them as per your instructions: BAM! oatmeal PB&J cookies!!! Thanks so much it worked amazingly!!! 🙂
I LOVE how you changed these to be PB & J thumbprint cookies – what a fantastic idea and I’m so happy they worked out so well 🙂 Thanks for your comment Carol!
OMG, there is a hair on your cookie!
I’m pretty certain that is long fabric strings from the fabric fraying 🙂
I added an extra egg yolk to help prevent potential crumbliness and swapped the brown sugar for coconut sugar. They came out great! No one cared that these didn’t have butter, white sugar, or flour—that’s a win in my book!
Awesome!! So great to hear everyone enjoyed them and didn’t miss the butter, white sugar, or flour 🙂 Thanks so much for the comment Molly!