Oatmeal Peanut Butter Bars |Cooking With Amanda

These oatmeal peanut butter bars. Oh my, yum. Seriously, so good. Plus - they're secretly quite healthy. Which means you can eat lots, right? No?

Yeah, okay, there's still peanut butter, and quite a bit of it, in them. And I suppose you shouldn't really consume truckloads of that stuff. It's healthier than a lot of things though, and a little bit is definitely fine. So I'm declaring these oatmeal peanut butter bars healthy.

Because I said so.

Seriously though, there's no refined sugar and no flour. The entire 8x8 inch pan of bars has only 1/4 cup of honey to sweeten them, and they're sweet enough! Yes, there's some mini M&Ms in there, because I couldn't resist making them into a monster cookie like bar (for the kids - obviously). You could easily reduce the number of M&Ms to 1/4 cup for the whole pan from the 1/2 cup I noted. I did that for one batch and it was chocolatey enough, so it just depends on how much chocolate you want in there. I think they would even be quite tasty without any chocolate in them at all. Which is saying something since we all know how much I enjoy my chocolate!

These oatmeal peanut butter bars even worked quite well with natural peanut butter if you prefer that. I did find they were a bit drier with the natural peanut butter though, so just be very sure not to over bake them if you go that route. We did prefer the regular peanut butter for these (although I wouldn't say no to one with the natural stuff, so there's that!).

Also, cold out of the refrigerator? Divine. A soft and chewy oatmeal peanut butter bar that can be mixed together in 10 minutes and is much healthier than the monster cookie bar it resembles? Yes, please.

Looking for a peanut butter cookie recipe that's a little more decadent? Try these no bake peanut butter cookie cups, or these amazing looking monster cookie bars!

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Oatmeal Peanut Butter Bars Recipe

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Ingredients

1/2 cup old fashioned rolled oats
1 large egg
1 cup peanut butter
1/4 cup honey
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/2 cup miniature m&m's candies

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line an 8x8 inch baking dish with parchment paper and set aside.
Place the rolled oats in the bowl of a food processor and pulse until they are coarsely ground.
Add the egg, peanut butter, honey, baking soda, salt and vanilla and process until well combined and the dough comes together into a ball. Stir in the mini M&M's.
Press the dough into the prepared baking dish. Bake for 22-24 minutes until lightly browned and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out cleanly. Let cool completely before slicing into bars.

Notes

These bars are best made with regular peanut butter. I have tried them with natural peanut butter too, and while still okay, they were quite dry. With regular peanut butter they were moist and chewy which we definitely preferred. Also, if you would like to cut the amount of M&M's to just 1/4 cup, they were still delicious with this smaller amount.