Delicious vegan dark chocolate oatmeal bars with a layer of creamy peanut butter and a sprinkle of sea salt. The oatmeal cookie base is sweet, buttery and cooked to chewy perfection!

And when I say perfection I really do mean it.  The hardest part about these chocolate oatmeal bars is having to wait for everything to cool and set before you can slice up and start shovelling!

My first attempt at making these bars didn’t get further than the oatmeal cookie bars bit.  I used too large a tin, this meant the oat cookie base was too thin and just wasn’t right.  No drama, the mix is ridiculously easy to make and the crumbled, a little bit too chewy cookie bars made a great porridge topping once they were crumbled up!

The second batch was made in quick succession, the stars aligned and the base cooked perfectly.  The thicker oatmeal bars are buttery, sweet with hints of caramel thanks to the brown sugar, and wonderfully chewy.

Topped with sweetened peanut butter and a layer of thick dark chocolate and a sprinkle of sea salt.  Oh my, I NEED to make these again.

Village life.

I believe I live in the best village in the country.  There’s the most amazing community here.  Not to the point of intrusive but I lived on a housing estate for over 15 years and couldn’t tell you the names of people more than one door away.  I’ve made more friends here in 12 months than I’ve had for literally years.  And thanks to the village Facebook page I’m able to offer the things I bake for this blog.

This has a couple of bonuses – it means I’m not tempted to eat an entire cake/12 cupcakes/batch of cookies all to myself.  No matter how much I could actually DO that.  And because I’m also selling them, I get to donate the proceeds to a couple of charities.  Win win. Oh and I get lots of lovely visitors on a slow Sunday.  The downside is they sell a bit too well.  And all I got of these chocolate oatmeal bars was the thin trimmings from one edge 🙁

The savoury recipes I develop for the blog are all good as I build those into my meal plan.  Yum.   All for me.

But the feedback for these baked oat cookie bars has been better than I could have expected.  I’ve been stopped on dog walks to discuss them and Deb over the road could eat the whole tray.  Good job she goes to zumba 😉

How to make these easy oatmeal cookie bars:

Start with the base.  This bit needs baking but is really as simple as combining all the ingredients together until well mixed then popping into a baking tin.  When it comes out of the oven it will have puffed up a bit so you’ll want to flatten it down with a spatula or palette knife.  This makes the bar slightly denser, really adding to that chewy texture.

Leave to cool for around half an hour before adding the peanut butter layer.  Melt the peanut butter, vegan butter and syrup together either in the microwave or saucepan over a gentle heat (keep an eye on it so it doesn’t catch and burn on the bottom)

Melt the chocolate either in the microwave or in a bain-marie (a heatproof bowl set over a bowl of barely simmering water)

Once you’ve got both your melted components, spread the peanut butter mixture over the oat cookie base until it’s covered.  Then pour over the chocolate and use a cocktail stick/skewer/pointy knife to drag the chocolate through the peanut butter layer.

Before the chocolate sets, sprinkle over some sea salt (this is optional but throughly recommended) and either leave to set at room temperature or pop in the fridge for half an hour(ish) before cutting into bars.

And don’t be like me, do yourself a favour and devour some before everyone else does!

Looking for even more vegan cookie bars recipes?  Try these:

Blackberry Crumble Bars

Peanut Butter Protein Bars

Pecan Pie Bars

Oat and Raspberry Crumble Bars

(No bake) Peanut Butter Oat Bars

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