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.
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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.
If I make my oat flour out of rolled oats to i still add the rolled oats also?
The recipe required an amount of oat flour and an amount of rolled. You can replace the rolled oats by oat flour, you need both
Delicious! I had to put under the broiler to brown the crumbles. I will definitely make these again.
Hi. I made these yesterday using gluten-free all purpose flour for my husband who is trying to identify stomach issues. This review comes from someone who can eat healthy foods but just as easily eat a Big Mac from McDonald’s. This isn’t like when my husband attempts veganism and asks me to try his tofu because it’s “good”. It’s not because I am not accustomed to eating it. However, these Vegan Blueberry Breakfast Bars are delicious! I tried the dough and blueberry filling separately just to make sure they tasted OK and were sweet enough. They did and were! I was pleasantly surprised! They are not overly sweet, but that is a perfect breakfast addition to a cup of coffee. They were pretty crumbly but after the 3 hour cool down time, I stored them in the fridge. It helped with the crumbles. I will definitely make again! Thanks so much for sharing your recipe!
I’ve had stomach issues with a bit of gluten sensitivity, and found that oat flour is a good substitute! You might want to try in small quantities to see.
Love these. I’m using strawberries the second time. The satisfy my sweet tooth guilt free and are great for breakfast.
Awesome
These blueberry breakfast bars are the greatest for anytime. They are a hit in my home + my customers love them + are asking me over + over to make them.
These are so good!!! My family and I have loved this recipe.
I swear these are the BEST blueberry bars I’ve ever tasted, and believe me…. I’ve tried so many recipes. So delicious!
These blueberry bars are our new obsession! Aka eating one right now with my morning smoothie. They aren’t overly sweet, and super easy to make! I love the idea of using chia seed to create the jam, my 2 year loves helping me make them and of course eating them after 🙂 I recently started an organic granola company, so I subbed the oats with the granola and it was SO good.
Thank you for creating such a wonderful healthy recipe!
Everyone in my household loved these!!! I thought the crumble topping was a good amount. Thanks you!