These soft, lightly sweet, no-bake peanut butter oat cups are the perfect healthy snack to fix a sweet craving with healthy, wholesome ingredients. A quick and easy healthy snack for peanut butter lovers that takes under 20 minutes to make.
Every week in my house, I prepare homemade no-bake snacks, made from oats, nut butter, and maple syrup. This is my favorite combination of ingredients that you will often find in my no-bake dessert recipes, like my 3-ingredient peanut butter oatmeal balls or my healthy no-bake oatmeal bars.
In terms of texture, I created these oat cups to be a mix between my no-bake peanut butter energy balls and a no-bake peanut butter bar. The bottom of the cups is soft, chewy, packed with maple and peanut butter flavors and bits and pieces of oats.
In the center, a dollop of creamy peanut butter is topped with a crunchy dark chocolate layer on top. The taste is close to my vegan peanut butter cups, packed with peanut butter flavors. But oats and flax meal add crunch and texture.
Why You Will Love This No-Bake Snack
It’s:
- Quick and easy
- Healthy and filling
- Tastes amazing for Peanut butter lovers
- Dairy-free and refined sugar-free
- Kids-friendly healthy snack
Ingredients To Make No-Bake Peanut Butter Oat Cups
You need very simple ingredients to make no-bake snacks like these no-bake oatmeal cups. The key is to get a muffin pan and paper liners or a silicone muffin pan.
- Old-Fashioned Oats – This ingredient adds texture to the cups. It is coarse and thick but a little less absorbent than quick oats. Feel free to use gluten-free certified oats if you need them.
- Quick Oats are the finer version of oats, and in no-bake desserts, they absorb moisture more than regular oats, which holds the ingredients together nicely.
- Flax Meal – Most no-bake oatmeal recipes won’t add any flax meal. I do because it’s high in fiber and binds the ingredients together, making the no-bake treats less soft and chewier. You can skip or swap for chia seed meal or oat flour.
- Maple Syrup or any liquid sweetener you have on hand like agave syrup, coconut nectar, or rice syrup.
- Peanut Butter is the crucial ingredient in this recipe. Make sure your nut butter is natural without added oil or added sugar. The recipe works with any nut butter, like almond butter, or seed butter, like sunflower seed butter, for a nut-free option.
- Vanilla Extract for flavor
- Salt to enhance the chocolate flavor. Don’t add salt if your peanut butter is already salted.
- Dark Chocolate Chips create a crunchy chocolate layer on top of the cups.
- Coconut Oil, or plant-based butter, is used to melt the chocolate chips.
Making The No-Bake Peanut Butter Oatmeal Layer
The technique to make a no-bake dessert is pretty basic and simple. All you need is to line a 12-hole mini muffin pan with paper liners – that’s how you will shape the no-bake oatmeal cups.
- Stir peanut butter, maple syrup, and vanilla extract in a mixing bowl until smooth.
- Fold in the dry ingredients: oats, quick oats, flax meal, and salt.
- Stir until the batter is sticky and consistent.
- Divide the oatmeal mixture into the prepared mini-paper cups and pack very well using the back of a spoon, creating a sort of depression in the center of the cup.
- Stir peanut butter, maple syrup, and vanilla extract in a small bowl. Add 1/2 teaspoon of peanut butter filling in the center of each cup. Meanwhile, melt the dark chocolate and coconut oil in a glass bowl in the microwave.
- Cover the top of each cup with melted dark chocolate. Pop the baking sheet in the freezer for 12 to 15 minutes to quickly harden the chocolate shell.
Expert Tips For No-Bake Treats
- Use fresh peanut butter – If your jar is a few weeks old, the peanut butter will be hard, dry, and too difficult to stir with the remaining ingredients.
- Pack the mixture firmly in the paper cups – This is important or the cups will fall apart when you remove the paper liner.
- Keep the cups small using mini muffin trays – Large oatmeal cups are fragile and break easily.
- Use paper liners – Even if you are using a muffin silicone pan, add the paper liners or the cups get difficult to unmold.
More No-Bake Snack Recipes
If you like this recipe, you’ll love these other no-bake snacks:
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No Bake Peanut Butter Oat Cups
Ingredients
- 1 ½ cups Old-Fashioned Rolled Oats
- ½ cup Quick Oats
- 2 tablespoons Flaxmeal
- ½ cup Maple Syrup
- ⅓ cup Peanut Butter - natural, unsalted
- 1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
- ¼ teaspoon Salt
Chocolate Layer
- 1 cup Dairy-Free Dark Chocolate Chips
- 2 teaspoons Coconut Oil
Peanut Butter Filling
- ¼ cup Peanut Butter
- 2 tablespoons Maple Syrup
- ¼ teaspoon Vanilla Extract
Instructions
- Line a 12-holes muffin pan with paper cups. Set aside.
- In a large bowl, stir peanut butter, maple, syrup, and vanilla extract until smooth.
- Stir in oats, quick oats, flax meal, and salt until it forms a sticky, consistent oat batter.
- Fill each cup with about 1 1/2 tablespoons of oat batter. Press to pack in the cup and use your finger to press lightly the center so the batter spreads more on the sides of the cups and it forms a small curve in the middle to fill with the peanut butter filling on the next step.
- Pop the pan in the freezer to set while making the peanut butter filling.
Peanut butter filling
- In another bowl, stir peanut butter, maple syrup, and vanilla extract.
- Remove the pan from the freezer and fill each oat cup with a teaspoon of peanut butter filling. Return the pan to the freezer.
Chocolate layer
- In a microwave-safe bowl, add the chocolate chips and coconut oil. Microwave for 30 seconds, stir, and repeat until fully melted.
- Remove the pan from the freezer and drizzle the melted chocolate on top of each cup.
- Bring the pan one last time in the freezer for about 12-15 minutes or until the chocolate layer is hard and set.
Notes
- Nut-free – use sunflower seed butter instead of peanut butter.
- Sugar-free – replace the sweetener with sugar-free monk fruit maple-flavored syrup.
- Gluten-free – use gluten-free certified oats.
These peanut butter cups are excellent! I made them to bring to a friend’s house for dinner. I used the full-size muffin tin, which made 12 perfectly with the oats mixture. The peanut butter filling seemed very scant, and I thought I almost needed more but adjusted each to fill all 12 cups. The chocolate made way too much, and only needed about 1/2 of it…so saved the rest for another batch. These are best eaten chilled and had the right proportion of filling to chocolate and oats. Full-size muffin tin was about a 6-bite treat! Will definitely make them again. Thank you!
Thank you!!