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.
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.
Allergy Swaps
I know that many of you love paleo vegan options for my recipes which means finding a grain-free alternative.
So below, I listed my easy swap tips to turn this recipe into a vegan paleo blueberry recipe.
- Almond Flour – Use almond flour instead of oat flour.
- Nuts– replace rolled oats with chopped walnuts, almonds, pecan or shredded coconut, or a combo of all!
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.
Did You Like This Recipe?
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Vegan Blueberry Breakfast Bars
Ingredients
- 1 ½ cup 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.
Does it matter what type of oats? I only have thick rolled and quick oats right now…I figured I could use flour for the crust but not sure of which would be better for the topping.
Rolled oats are the best for this.
Hi, My 21 month old son and I made this recipe yesterday.
It is amazing, we both love it. As a mum,it is important to me that I put healthy, nutritious food on the table.
It is only a bonus that it was super fun making it with a toddler.
I will definitely try more of your recipes !
Thank you
Oww thank you so much, I’m so glad my recipe created memories!!!!
This is a truly yummy recipe. Have cooked twice now substituting the blueberries for raspberries and secondly blackberries. Both were totally delicious!
Thank you!!!
Recettes en Français ?
Hi! Can I use frozen berries instead?
Sure, you are cooking the berries for this recipe, so you can cook frozen berries instead of fresh
You can use Google Translate! It’s pretty good!
Absolutely LOVED this recipe! Only change I made was adding protein powder to the crust to increase the amount of protein in this recipe! I’d definitely recommend making a double batch of these!
Thank you so much!!!
I am not at all a good cook, or baker. My 1 yr old is allergic to eggs and dairy (and most other things). I’ve been looking for a good snack for her. I’ve tried a lot of vegan oatmeal bar type recepies and they all fall pretty short lol. This recepie is BOMB. The directions are easy to follow, it’s basic ingredients, and it’s not loaded with sugar. absolutely, AMAZING.
These look delicious! I’m trying to incorporate more protein in my diet as I switch over to plant based. Do you think sprinkling in vanilla protein powder in either the “crust” or the filling would work?
Protein powder will be better in the jam I think, it will make the dough of the crust too dry and crumbly
I added it to the jam and it came out really good! It’s a great way to get in your protein intake!
Excellent recipe, so delicious!! I used organic olive oil, and put organic oatmeal through the food processor and used that for my flour. It came out very delicious.
These are so good! I subbed ground flaxseed for the chia and honey for the syrup. I added about a half cup of chopped apricots to the blueberries because they were getting soft. Will definitely be making this again.
can you use flaxseed instead of chia seeds?
Yes you can