These vegan blueberry breakfast bars are healthy oatmeal bars with a juicy, sweet blueberry chia seed jam and crunchy oatmeal crumble on top. It’s an easy, healthy breakfast recipe to make in 20 minutes and meal-prep your breakfasts for a whole week!
I’m a self-proclaimed breakfast bar expert. Just have a look at all my previous recipes and you’ll see what I mean: Chocolate Peanut Butter Oatmeal Bars, Raspberry Oatmeal Bars, Peanut Butter Banana Oatmeal Bars, Apple Oatmeal Bars, and No-Bake Oatmeal Bars.
They are all amazingly simple and delicious recipes. And the combination of blueberries and lemon is amazing, just try my Blueberry Lemon Blondies to be convinced!
These bars are a healthier version of the classic blueberry breakfast bar recipe but are made without butter, cornstarch, or dairy. They are naturally sweetened with unrefined sugar from maple syrup and loaded with plant-based proteins from oats and chia seeds.
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Vegan Blueberry Breakfast Bars
Ingredients
- 1 ½ cup Homemade Oat Flour - or all-purpose flour or spelt flour
- 1 ¼ cup Rolled Oats
- ⅓ cup Maple Syrup - or agave or rice syrup
- ⅓ cup Coconut Oil - melted
- ¼ teaspoon Salt
- ½ teaspoon Vanilla
Blueberry chia seed jam
- 2 cups Blueberry - fresh or frozen
- 3 tablespoons Maple Syrup - or agave or rice syrup
- 2 tablespoons Lemon Juice
- 2 tablespoons Chia Seeds
- ½ teaspoon Lemon Zest
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350°F (180°C). Line an 8-inch x 8-inch baking pan with parchment paper. Set aside.
- In a large mixing bowl, combine all the crust ingredients: oat flour, rolled oats, maple syrup, melted coconut oil, salt, and vanilla.
- Squeeze the batter with your hands to bring all the ingredients in contact and create a dough that sticks together. If too dry (may happen if you are using a coarse oat flour), add 1-2 tablespoons of water, add 1 at a time, until the dough is soft and stick together.
- Press 1 3/4 cup of the dough all over the baking dish, using a spatula to smoothen the dough and making sure there is no hole left. Set aside leftover dough in a small mixing bowl in the fridge. You will use it for the crumble on top of the bar.
- Place the pan in the fridge while you make the blueberry chia seed jam.
Blueberry chia seed jam
- In a small saucepan, add the blueberries, maple syrup, lemon juice, lemon zest, and chia seeds.
- Cook for 1-2 minutes on medium heat until bubbles form on the sides of the pan.
- Mash the blueberries using a fork or potato masher and keep cooking for 2 minutes, stirring all the time to prevent the jam from burning. It should slightly thicken but still be very runny. It will thicken in the oven, don't worry.
- Pour the jam on top of the prepared crust then use the remaining dough to crumble all other the bar.
- Bake the bar for 35 minutes or until crispy on top and golden.
- Remove from the oven and cool in the pan 10 minutes before transferring onto a cooling rack.
- Cool for 3 hours or until it reaches room temperature before slicing into 16 bars. Waiting will prevent the bar from crumbling, and the jam will set perfectly.
- Store the bars in the pantry in an airtight container for up to 3 days or in the fridge for up to 1 week. Otherwise, freeze and defrost the day before breakfast.
Notes
Nutrition
Ingredients and Substitutions
As I mentioned above, you need only one dough to create the base and crumble. The trick is to make the whole oatmeal dough first and then set aside 1/2 cup of dough to use later as a crumble.
The ingredients you need to prepare these two layers are:
- Homemade Oat flour – You can make your own oat flour. It is easy and cheap. Bring rolled oats into a blender and blend at high speed until a fine powder forms. It shouldn’t take more than 30 seconds in a high-speed blender. Measure the amount you need to make the recipe and store the leftovers in an airtight container in the pantry for later. Also, if you don’t have oat flour, you can use all-purpose flour for this recipe.
- Rolled Oats or instant oats if preferred.
- Maple Syrup – You can also use coconut nectar, brown rice syrup, or agave syrup.
- Coconut Oil – You can also use avocado oil to decrease saturated fat, but the base will be more fragile. Don’t skip the oil, nor use applesauce as an oil-free replacement. It doesn’t work.
- Vanilla – For flavor.
- Blueberries – Fresh or frozen, no need to thaw. For the blueberry layer
- Lemon juice – To give the jam its distinctive tangy taste.
- Chia Seeds – White or black both work the same. If you can’t eat chia seeds, a healthy swap is a flaxseed meal. Replace the chia seeds in this recipe with 2 tablespoons of flaxseed meal. Chia seeds are super-seeds loaded with healthy fat, plant-based protein, calcium, iron, and magnesium!
- Lemon Zest – optional and only if you are using untreated lemon!
How To Make Healthy Blueberry Oatmeal Bars
This is easier than you think to make your own breakfast bars with berry jam. It takes only 3 steps and minimal pantry ingredients to create a healthy oat bar to start the day. The best part of this oatmeal crumble breakfast bar recipe is that the base and crumble pieces on top use the same recipe!
So you don’t have to create an extra dough for the crumble, which greatly reduces the preparation time.
Let me explain step-by-step how to make the healthiest blueberry breakfast bars, 100% dairy-free, gluten-free, and refined sugar-free!
- Preheat Oven and Prepare Pan: Preheat your oven to 350°F (180°C). Line an 8-inch x 8-inch baking pan with parchment paper. Set aside.
- Prepare the Crust: In a large mixing bowl, combine oat flour, rolled oats, maple syrup, melted coconut oil, salt, and vanilla.
- Squeeze the mixture with your hands to form a dough. If too dry, add 1-2 tablespoons of water, one at a time, until the dough is soft and sticks together.
- Press 1 3/4 cups of the dough evenly into the prepared baking dish, using a spatula to smoothen it. Set aside the remaining dough in a small bowl in the fridge for the crumble topping later.
- Chill the Crust: Place the pan in the fridge while you prepare the blueberry chia seed jam.
- Make Blueberry Chia Seed Jam: In a small saucepan, combine blueberries, maple syrup, lemon juice, lemon zest, and chia seeds. Cook for 1-2 minutes until bubbles form on the sides of the pan.
- Mash the blueberries and continue cooking for 2 more minutes, stirring constantly. The jam should slightly thicken but remain runny.
- Assemble and Bake: Pour the blueberry jam over the crust. Use the remaining dough to crumble evenly over the jam.
- Bake for 35 minutes or until the top is crispy and golden.
- Cool and Slice: Allow the bars to cool in the pan for 10 minutes before transferring them to a cooling rack.
- Cool for 3 hours or until they reach room temperature before slicing into 16 bars. Waiting helps the bars set properly without crumbling.
Step-By-Step Instructions
Storage Instructions
These vegan, gluten-free breakfast bars store really well in the fridge in an airtight container for up to one week.
Also, you can freeze the bars and defrost them the day before.
More Healthy Vegan Breakfast Recipes
I love to share simple healthy vegan recipes, so you may also like the following vegan gluten-free breakfast recipes.
Can I use Bob’s Red Mill Gluten Free Oat Flour for this? And Gluten Free rolled oats?
Sure!
hey this sounds amazing. im going to try tommorow. Funny story, So I’m starting my diet this week, starting a little late, (was suppose to start today) lol But Tuesday is good. So i thought to myself hey let’s make me some healthy oatmeal bars. So I get on the internet and saw a recipe (looked at the picture) and said perfect. I go to my pantry and start getting all my ingredients, when I noticed it called for sugar, im like well a little sugar won’t hurt. So there I was Tonight@ starting this recipe when I see, after I mixed the oats and the flour and the cinnamon low and behold! 21/2 cups of sugar. what@!! I said to myself. so i finished the recipe, very disheartened because these are not going to help me lose weight, but gain a ton! lol so I found your recipe and going to make it tommorow. This recipe is a life saver. Glad i found it. Next time im going to read recipes first before I start. lesson learned.
I look forward to hear your feedback on these!
This was delicious! I used a mix of blueberries, raspberries, and blackberries. I didn’t have lemon juice so left it out & still tasted great. Love how healthy this recipe is. Will make again and thanks for the recipe!
Thank you so much! it sounds delicious with your mix of berries.
these look great! But what can I use instead of coconut oil? I try to cook low fat and I definitely don’t use coconut oil. Any suggestions would be really appreciated.
Any oil you have on hands, like olive oil. You do need oil or it will crumble appart.
can you use melted butter if you’re not vegan?
Absolutely!
Such a great clean recipe that my teens devour the same day I make it. No need to worry about how to store it!!
Thank you for this lovely review, I am so happy they love the bars so much!
could you please give me tips on how to increase the protein in this recipe? would any of these options be successful?
adding Hemp Hearts &/or ground nuts to the crust / topping
thanks!
I usually add hemp hearts, as they won’t change the bar texture like protein powder or absorbent food like chia seeds. I would definitely add the seeds in the jam as adding in the crust could make it crumbly. Or try 1/4 cup in each the crust, and the jam.
The best! Make these all the time. My girls love them too.
Thank you so much!
Can I swap out the coconut oil for something else?
Any oil like light olive oil work too.
Hi, If l double this recipe what size pan should l use and would the oven temp. change along with baking time, or anything else? Thank you
I haven’t double up the bar, I guess a 9 x 13 inches will work. The baking time should change much because it won’t impact the height of the bars.
I haven’t made these yet but they look amazing. Would no sugar Mrs. Butterworths syrup work?
Any syrup, even sugar free should work. Some sugar free syrup contains loads of fiber and dry out baked goods so you may need to adjust regarding that.