For anyone with overly ripe bananas at home, I hope you’ll give these peanut butter banana oat bars a try. The recipe I came up with over the weekend is very easy to make, and I’ve been loving these soft and chewy treats for pre-workout fuel this week!
Soft and Chewy Peanut Butter Banana Oat Bars
Makes around a dozen bars
Ingredients
- 3 cups rolled oats (use gluten free if necessary)
- 1/3 cup pure maple syrup
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1.5 tsp salt
- 2 tsp ground cinnamon
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 3/4 cup unsweetened vanilla almond milk (or milk of choice)
- 2 large eggs, lightly beaten
- 2 large mashed bananas
- 1/2 cup unsalted creamy peanut butter
- Chia seeds
Directions
- Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F.
- Line a 9×13 baking dish with parchment paper.
- In a large bowl, mix together the oats, baking powder, salt, and ground cinnamon.
- In a separate bowl, mash the two bananas. Add in the vanilla extract, milk, maple syrup, and eggs. Stir, and then add in the peanut butter.
- Pour the wet ingredients into the dry, and stir until combined.
- Line a 9×13 baking dish with parchment paper, and then pour the mixture into the pan. Sprinkle the top with chia seeds.
- Bake for 25-30 minutes or until top is golden brown and bars have set.
- Cool, cut into bars, and enjoy!
I like that these bars are soft and chewy because they resemble granola bars that you can buy at the grocery store, minus all the refined sugar and processed chemicals. Whenever I buy granola bars at the store, I lean toward peanut butter flavored ones, so these are a great replacement. They stay well in an airtight container and are the perfect nutritious grab and go snack for anyone on the run. Also, since they don’t have a lot of sugar in them, I don’t want to eat the whole batch in one sitting. Bonus!
Hope you love them! If you make them, post a pic to social media because 1) I wanna see, and 2) I’m starting a “You Made It, You Did It” blog series to feature F&F readers who make my recipes and do my workouts. Unless you email me or post a pic, I won’t know!
Readers, let’s chat! What flavor granola bars do you like? What do you eat for pre-workout fuel?
This post is an updated version of a recipe I posted back in 2012. The content, recipe ingredients, and pictures have all been redone to be more reflective of my current stance on what healthy eating means for me.
I’m not sure how many I would take, but, from living with Bret, I have definitely learned that you have to be VERY specific about pretty much everything when talking to a guy. Welcome to cohabitation!
I may have taken the same as Tim! My thinking is a few equals three – some equals more than three!! At least the plate wasn’t left empty!
Wonderful! You are so a talented baker! =)
Just a note I figured out the calories of this recipe and if you cut it into 9 squares they would be 123 calories each and 1103 for the whole pan.
Can I freeze these for the weeks breakfast?
I think so!
Thank you for a great website- I enjoyed looking through your blog and look forward to making some of the recipes. I tried making these bars this morning. I followed the recipe exactly except my banana was a bit toward the small side- so I threw in a spoonfull of pumpkin. No harm done, and it makes me wonder what they might be like with pumpkin instead of banana. Anyway, they had good texture and flavor, and the serving is large enough to know you ate something. Easy to bake and a good alternative to the prepackaged granola bars I normally would eat!
Reblogged this on Caffeinated Catholic and commented:
Trying these tonight! Woo!
Nice! Hope you like them. Thanks for the reblog!
Can I substitute the vanilla almond milk for regular skim milk?
Yup! This recipe should work with whatever milk you prefer to use. I like using almond milk for a non-dairy alternative. Let me know how you like these!
Yum! These look awesome. I alwaysss have too ripe bananas lying around the house or frozen in the freezer. Perfect for this kind of recipe
To no fail, I have bananas that are too ripe… every single week!
I dont think I will ever get bored of granola bars or anything with banana and oats!
Me either, Mattie!
These bars are great! I may add a bit more salt. I would also suggest cutting up them up, wrapping them individually, and then freezing them! Delicious!
Thanks for the tip, Dawn! I did make these again over the weekend and added an extra tsp of salt like you suggested. I made the change to the recipe ingredients above!