Oatmeal Breakfast Bars for Kids: Easy Homemade Recipe

These oatmeal breakfast bars for kids are a perfect, high-protein, naturally sweetened, make ahead breakfast option your kids will love! Whole food, nutritious ingredients in this easy recipe are a great way to start the day.

What You’ll Need to Make These Oatmeal Breakfast Bars for Kids

This isn’t necessarily a short ingredient list, but I’d guess that you have most of these in your kitchen at any given time to make these wholesome bars!

Rolled Oats or old-fashioned oats (I’d avoid using instant oats in this recipe, as they get soggier when baked like this).

Baking powder

Salt

Cinnamon

Eggs

Melted Butter or melted coconut oil

Vanilla extract

Apple sauce 

Honey (you can substitute maple syrup or sugar)

Milk or water

Chopped nuts (I use pecans, but use your favorites!)

How to Make These Oatmeal Breakfast Bars for Kids

First, preheat your oven to 375 degrees.

In a large mixing bowl combine dry ingredients (rolled oats, baking powder, salt, cinnamon and chopped nuts).

After you mix your dry ingredients, combine the wet ingredients (eggs, melted butter, vanilla, apple sauce, honey, and milk) in a separate bowl.

Stir the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients until well combined.

Before pouring into your dish, grease it with coconut oil.

After mixing, pour the oatmeal breakfast bars mixture into a 9×13 baking dish.

Bake for 35-40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. 

I cut mine into 16 sections, but you can certainly cut smaller pieces.

Possible Substitutions

This recipe is one of our favorites because of the versatility of ingredients. You can add in your favorites, or omit the things your picky eaters don’t enjoy.

For example, cinnamon can be substituted for pumpkin pie spice. Chopped nuts like pecans can be substituted for almonds, walnuts, chia seeds, or sunflower seeds.

Melted butter can be substituted for coconut oil.

Apple sauce can be substituted with mashed bananas, apple pie filling, or even pureed pumpkin.

Honey can be substituted with maple syrup, brown sugar, or white sugar.

Optional Add Ins For Oatmeal Breakfast Bars

There are tons of good options for add ins to change up the recipe:

• Chocolate chips
• Nuts: pecans, walnuts, almonds
• Seeds: sunflower seeds, chia seeds, hemp seeds, poppy seeds
• Dried fruit: cranberries or raisins
• Fresh fruit: fresh blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, bananas, apples
• Pumpkin puree
• Nut butter: peanut butter, almond butter, sunflower seed butter
• Spices: cinnamon, pumpkin pie spice, nutmeg, ginger
• Unsweetened coconut

Serving and Storing

My kids love all things fruit and all things oatmeal, so these make a yummy snack as well as an easy breakfast that is a great way to get a complete meal.

As a breakfast, these can be served with fresh fruit or their favorite jam. Also, a smear of peanut or almond butter across the top. Sometimes, we even add chocolate chips and fresh homemade whipped cream for a dessert!

They are so easy to serve in multiple ways that they are delicious cold, warm, or at room temperature, which makes it simple for an easy snack time.

To store these healthy breakfast bars, place them in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to a week.

If you won’t go through these quickly enough fresh, they freeze extremely well for meal preps.

Maybe even consider making a big batch just to have some in the freezer when you need them!

I like to wrap each serving in parchment paper or saran wrap/plastic wrap and store them in a gallon freezer bag. That way I can pull them out one or two at a time to thaw in the fridge.

To thaw, pull a few squares out the day before you need them and allow them to thaw in the fridge.

I like them best reheated in the oven on 350 for about 10 minutes, but my kids are perfectly happy with them being reheated in the microwave for a few seconds.

Come back and let me know if you add this to your list of new recipes for your kids to try!

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