Blueberry Walnut Breakfast Cookies
Blueberry Walnut Breakfast Cookies
Ingredients
- 1 cup peanut butter creamy
- ¼ cup honey
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 2 bananas medium, ripe, mashed
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon ground
- 2 ¼ cups quick oats
- ½ cup dried blueberries
- ⅓ cup walnuts chopped
- ⅓ cup pumpkin seeds plain
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 325°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside.
- In a large bowl combine the creamy peanut butter, honey, vanilla extract, mashed ripe bananas, salt, and cinnamon. Stir until smooth and fully combined.
- Add the quick oats, dried blueberries, chopped walnuts, and pumpkin seeds to the peanut butter mixture. Stir until everything is evenly distributed and no dry oats remain.
- Using a quarter cup measure or large cookie scoop, divide the dough into 24 portions and place them on the prepared baking sheet. Gently flatten each one with your palm or the back of a spoon into a round cookie shape about half an inch thick. The dough will not spread in the oven so shape them the way you want them to look when finished.
- Bake for 14 to 16 minutes until the edges are set and the tops look lightly golden. The cookies will still feel soft when they come out of the oven and will firm up as they cool.
- Allow to cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.
Nutrition
I have definitely been a little skeptical about breakfast cookies being enough. I mean, this is definitely not enough for like a full meal but breakfast cookies… They don’t have chocolate chips or like raisins…. that just sounds weird.
But I gave it a shot.
These ones have peanut butter, ripe banana, honey, dried blueberries, walnuts, and pumpkin seeds all baked into a cookie that holds together, travels well, and keeps in the fridge all week.
Twenty-four cookies at 140 calories each. Thirty minutes start to finish. No refined sugar, no flour, no butter. Just real ingredients that happen to come together into something that tastes good enough to look forward to in the morning.
These work as a grab and go breakfast, an after school snack, also great for pre-run or something to pack in a lunch alongside a piece of fruit.
What Makes These Work
The ripe banana does two things here. It adds natural sweetness that means you only need a quarter cup of honey for the whole batch, and it acts as a binder that holds everything together without eggs or flour. The riper the banana the better on both counts. Spotted, very soft bananas will give you a noticeably sweeter cookie and a smoother texture in the finished dough.
The combination of walnuts and pumpkin seeds is what gives these cookies staying power beyond a standard oat cookie. You get healthy fats, fiber, and protein from three different sources in every bite, which is what makes these actually hold you over rather than just satisfying a craving for 20 minutes.
Dried blueberries add a chewy, concentrated sweetness that works really well against the earthiness of the oats and the richness of the peanut butter. They are worth seeking out specifically rather than substituting fresh or frozen, which would add too much moisture to the dough.
A Few Things Worth Knowing Before You Start
The dough does not spread in the oven so shape the cookies the way you want them to look before they go in. Flatten each one to about half an inch thick with your palm or the back of a spoon. If you leave them as rounded mounds they will come out as rounded mounds.
They will feel soft when they come out of the oven even if the edges look set and golden. This is normal. Give them the full 5 minutes on the baking sheet before moving them and they will firm up into a proper cookie texture as they cool. Moving them too early is how they fall apart.
Bake at the full 325°F rather than a higher temperature. The lower heat gives the cookies time to dry out slightly and set all the way through without burning the bottom or getting too dark on the outside before the center is done.
Store in an airtight container in the fridge for up to five days or freeze for up to two months. They thaw quickly at room temperature and are also good eaten cold straight from the fridge.
