A Nature Valley copycat recipe: soft-baked Oatmeal Bars! These peanut butter flavored bars are thick, chewy, and dotted with peanut butter baking chips. These naturally gluten-free bars are made with better-for-you ingredients.
Try our other gluten-free treats: Gluten-Free Pumpkin Cake, Healthy Chocolate Cookies, or Blueberry Oatmeal Bars.
The Best Oatmeal Bars
On a recent road trip, we tried Nature Valley’s® Peanut Butter Oatmeal Squares. The kids and I loved how soft they were, but I didn’t love the ingredients used. So, when we got home, I decided to make my own version of oatmeal bars.
These homemade oatmeal bars are soft and chewy. They taste a lot like peanut butter cookies mixed with oatmeal. I use natural sweetener like honey, plus good ingredients like peanut butter, oats, and oat flour. The peanut butter chips have some sugar, but you can switch them with dark chocolate to make the bars more nutritious.
Oatmeal Bars Ingredients
- Peanut Butter: This provides the main flavor, structure, and is filling due to its protein content.
- Honey: Naturally sweetens the bars and is rich in antioxidants.
- Light Brown Sugar: Adds a bit more sweetness, used minimally (only 1/4 cup).
- Egg: Stabilizes the batter, adds flavor and protein.
- Vanilla Extract: Gives a subtle flavor enhancement.
- Baking Soda: Prevents the bars from being too dense.
- Oats and Oat Flour: These form the base of your oatmeal bars, providing structure and chewiness. You can make oat flour from these same oats.
- Peanut Butter Chips: They add a fun element, but you can replace them with nuts or dark chocolate chips for a healthier option.
Quick Tip
Line the pan with parchment paper and leave an overhang for easy removal. These oatmeal bars stick to the pan and be nearly impossible to pull out without the parchment paper.
How To Make Oatmeal Bars
- Prep: Preheat your oven and line an 8×8-inch baking pan with parchment paper.
- Mix: In a large bowl, combine peanut butter, honey, brown sugar, an egg, vanilla extract, baking soda, salt, old-fashioned oats, and oat flour. Beat until smooth. Then, fold in the peanut butter chips.
- Bake: Pour the batter into the pan and smooth it out. Bake.
- Cut and Serve: Let the oatmeal bars cool in the pan, then cut them into squares.
More Easy Snack Recipes
Oatmeal Bars
Ingredients
- 3/4 cup creamy peanut butter
- 1/2 cup honey
- 1/4 cup light brown sugar, lightly packed
- 1 large egg
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 cup old fashioned oats
- 1/2 cup oat flour (See Note 2)
- 1 cup peanut butter chips
- Optional: 1/4 cup creamy peanut butter
Instructions
- PREP: Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Line an 8x8-inch pan with parchment paper, leaving an overhang for easy removal, and set aside.
- BARS: Combine all the ingredients except the peanut butter chips in a large bowl. Beat with a hand mixer until smooth. Add in the peanut butter chips and fold with a spatula to combine.
- BAKE: Transfer batter to the prepared pan and smooth into an even layer. Bake for 18-22 minutes or until lightly browned around the edges. They may look a bit underdone or gooey in the center, but as long as they don't jiggle at all, they are done. These bars continue to set up and firm as they cool.
- CUT AND SERVE: Remove bars from the oven and let cool completely in the pan. Use the parchment paper overhang to pull out the bars and cut into 12 squares with a sharp knife.
- OPTIONAL: (This is for the peanut butter fanatics!) Once bars are cut into squares, place 1/4 cup of peanut butter in a small resealable bag. Cut off a tiny corner tip of the bag and pipe the peanut butter on the top of the bars.
Video
Recipe Notes
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
I had a holiday in the USA a few weeks ago and I done it on the cheap by shopping in walmart instead of always eating out. I bought the nature valley bars and they are divine. They are my favourite of all the breakfast bars I have ever had. However, we don’t have them here. So I’m so glad i came across this cause I’m going to make this at the weekend. We don’t have peanut butter chips either 🙁 so i might use chocolate chips instead.
I’m so happy you found this recipe then!! I hope you love them 🙂
Hi,
These look so delicious. Do u have any nutritional information for them (like…calories, fiber, protein etc.)?
Thanks!
Made these for my husband who loves the Nature Valley bars. He loved them! Thanks for giving me a recipe to cut out processed ingredients.
Awesome!! That is so great to hear! Thank you for the comment Alicia! 🙂
Hi Chelsea
So, I love to bake….but I always have problems with the outcome…
I posted earlier that I was going to use Wow Butter instead of peanut butter. (Also used Choc. chips) Aside from that, I followed the recipe to a T. They smelled wonderful. However, they came out so crumbly and dry, they won’t even stay in the squares that I cut, they just fall apart into crumbs 🙁
Everyone said how great they are, so clearly it’s me…I just wish I knew what. ….
Any thoughts?
It may be the Wow butter if you’ve tried everything else; I’m not sure what else could make them crumbly 🙁 I’ve made these many, many times and never had them crumble, but I’ve also always used regular peanut butter, so that’s all I can think that would have changed it? I wish I could be of more help Shelley!!
Hi! This recipe sounds awesome!! I have a question, besides the fact that they wouldn’t be quite as healthy for me, could I make these using regular flour and not whole wheat flour?? I have everything in the house but the whole wheat flour and really don’t want to make an extra trip to the store just for flour! Thank you!!
Yes that is totally fine! 🙂
Do you have a calorie/carb count on this?
Hi Chelsea,
I would love to make these for my daughter for breakfast. She doesn’t feel comfortable eating PB just before school, as many kids at school have allergies. Have you ever tried this with a PB substitute , such as Pea butter or Wow butter?
I would love to hear what you think?
I haven’t ever tried a substitute for peanut butter and one person that did try Wow Butter didn’t have great results, so I’m not sure if I would recommend a substitute for these. I wish I could say for sure if I knew what would work, but I don’t unfortunately.
How do you think they would turn out if I substituted banana for peanut butter?
I actually don’t think that would work for these bars unfortunately.
Thank you so much for posting this. These are my absolute favorite bars and this was spot on and DELICIOUS!!! Although i didn’t add the peanut chips and I changed the amount of honey.
Five stars!
I’m soooo excited I found this pin and recipe!! My son eats a NV square every morning and it is my daily dose of guilt. Just kidding, I’m not that dramatic. I had them for me when he was a baby for a quick snack, then it turned into him trying them, then now at 2 years old he eats one while we get ready for work. I’m excited to try this. Mostly for the better ingredients for my son, but also because those squares are pricey and sometimes the quality is weird. Like sometimes they are soft, sometimes they are hard…yuck! Thank you!!
Dear Chelse,
I baked a batch of these this morning (actually around 3am) by 9 am they were GONE!!! I am right now busy making 4 more batches for neighbors and myself plus typing up your recipe to give to them.”WARNING” Ladies these are so beyond good that they ought to be illegal cause I could NOT stop eating them.These have got to be by far the “BEST” oatmeal bars (the copy-cat soft ones) EVER!!! A part of me wishes I never found you and your recipe but I can’t help but Thank you and wanna jump through the internet and hug you for sharing this out-of-this-world-GREAT recipe. Lord help I can’t quit eating them they are just that GOOD no no nonot just GOOD……..YUMMY-LISHOUS.
Thank you from the bottom of my southern Texas heart.Now I gotta go find a rehab that will cure an oatmeal bar addiction.
Again Thank for sharing
Dianne M.
San Antonio, TX