These vegan peanut butter oatmeal cookies are the perfect combination of an oatmeal cookie and a peanut butter cookie.
Well….yes I know, I’m stating the obvious, but the reason for that is… it was sooo not easy to get it to this perfect combo! But get there I did and what you see before you represents a totally perfect blend of flavors and textures! I am proud I tell you, proud!
I did have to make approximately 3000 batches of these cookies to get it right. Okay, small exaggeration but it was at least 10. I kind of nearly lost the will at one point! But I knew I would get there in the end and it would be worth it. 
The big mistake I made when starting out with these cookies was thinking I could just adapt my vegan oatmeal cookies to add peanut butter. Oh no. Not at all. The result was pasty, not sweet enough, just… not good at all.
So then I was trying to incorporate rolled oats into my vegan peanut butter cookies recipe. Again, it just didn’t work. I tried various combinations and each time the results were just not favorable. Jaye took a batch of cookies over to the neighbors because he thought he was doing something nice and I was super embarrassed! That’s how totally ‘not good’ they were. Now I’m trying to send over other baked goods to try and show them that yes – I actually can bake!
The perfect combination in the end turned out to be a mix of brown and white sugar. White sugar is lighter than brown sugar so doesn’t weigh the cookies down as much, and since peanut butter is quite a dense ingredient, this turned out to be important. But I wanted the mix of the two sugars because oatmeal cookies is more a brown sugar type of cookie and peanut butter cookies more a white sugar type of cookie. And then I needed a mix of both baking powder and baking soda, not one or the other.
The other trick was not to use too much peanut butter. Half a cup was just right, any more than that was too heavy on these cookies.
I tried a version using a flax egg but the result was a batter that was too wet and spread too much. The cookies were very tasty (by this time I was getting the recipe right!) but because they spread so much they were also too thin and breakable.
So I removed the flax egg just to see what happened. Then there was too little spread. The cookies were very delicious by this point but a bit too puffy and fat. When they came out the oven and were still warm I pressed down on a few of them with a fork and those flattened cookies were the best tasting.
So I made another batch, this time pressing down on them with a fork before they baked and then the result was vegan peanut butter oatmeal cookie perfection! I have never been so happy to get a cookie right!
So I hope you’ll love these vegan peanut butter oatmeal cookies, they are wonderfully crunchy, perfectly sweet and a perfect blend of flavors and textures. They are also very addicting! You definitely want (lots) more than one!
So please let me know what you think of these vegan peanut butter oatmeal cookies, leave a comment and rate the recipe too.
For more gorgeous vegan cookies, check out these delicious recipes:
- Vegan Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Vegan Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Vegan Anzac Biscuits
- Vegan Thumbprint Cookies
- Vegan Snickerdoodles
- Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies
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Vegan Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookies
Ingredients
- ½ cup Vegan Butter (112g)
- ½ cup White Granulated Sugar (100g)
- ¼ cup Light Brown Sugar (50g)
- ½ cup Smooth Creamy Peanut Butter (125g)
- 1 tsp Vanilla Extract
- ¾ cups All Purpose Flour (94g)
- 1 cup Rolled Oats (100g)
- ½ tsp Baking Powder
- ½ tsp Baking Soda
- ½ tsp Salt
Instructions
- Add the vegan butter and white and brown sugar to an electric mixer bowl and cream them together. Do this very well, let it run a couple of minutes while you get some other ingredients ready. Add in the peanut butter and vanilla extract while the mixer is running and let them mix in well.
- Add the flour, rolled oats, baking powder, baking soda and salt to a bowl and mix in together. Then add all the dry ingredients in with the vegan butter, sugar and peanut butter mixture. Mix together with a spoon (don't use the electric mixer for this part).
- Preheat the oven to 350°F (180°C).
- Your cookie dough should be fairly wet, a little too wet to roll into balls with your hands. Use a cookie scoop to scoop out even sized amount of dough onto a parchment lined baking tray. Aim for roughly 2 Tbsp sized balls and to get around 20 cookies.
- Flatten the cookies with a fork.
- Bake for 12-15 minutes. When you bring them out the oven they will be very soft in the middle but lightly browned on top.
- Allow them to cool directly on the tray so they can firm up before you move them.
The recipe sounds delicious! Could I use fresh ground peanut butter that’s not really creamy or not really chunky?
You probably can, just make sure it’s mixed well first.
I really want to make these, but only have steel cut oats. Is there any way I can substitute that for the rolled oats??
Hi Emily, unfortunately that won’t work at all. Maybe try our peanut butter cookies (no oats) instead. 🙂
Amazing recipe that produced the most delicious cookies. I added a little bit of almond milk to make the consistency a bit softer. They are fabulous ????
Wonderful! Thanks so much Dawn!
Sooooo good! The best peanut butter oatmeal cookies ever! They were demolished by the family. I managed to get away with half the sugar. Still delicious! Thank you Alison!
That’s awesome Satin! Thanks for the great review!
Oh my! The cookies turned out divine, thanks to your A+ recipe. The sweetness was perfection, the overall taste heavenly, and the texture was something special that I’ve never been able to produce in a cookie — soft, moist and “chewy” in the best way. (They never did get “hard,” even cooled.)
My three rescue dogs (two large, one medium) loved them too! The medium fur baby even followed me to my bedroom door and insisted I split another one with her before retiring. It was too funny.
Many thanks for this delightful recipe.
That’s so awesome and so happy the fur babies loved them too! 🙂
I usually have bad luck with peanut butter cookies, but this recipe was so easy and they came out PERFECTLY! My husband and kids ate them before they had fully cooled on the pan! These are a big hit and now will be a regular at our house. ❤️
Wonderful! Thanks so much Anna!
Great cookies! Loved them. Thanks!
Awesome! Thanks Lillian!
Hi…I tried these as a ‘practice’ bake. I typically use a regular Peanut butter/Oatmeal recipe, but wanted to bake something special for my son who is vegan and I have to say, I enjoyed these cookies even more my usual ones!! So, will definitely be keeping this. Just wondering if the batter can be made ahead and frozen?
Thanks.
Hi Tia, glad you enjoyed them! Yes you can freeze them ahead of baking, I would roll into balls first and then freeze.
I’m posting this just in case it’s helpful for anyone else- I was worried that I was going to completely mess up this recipe with all my substitutions and additions but my cookies held together, were delicious and satisfied my craving! Warning for vegan readers- I used half real butter (totally understand if you’re not into that but I didn’t have vegan butter) and half vegetable shortening. I also used Quaker quick oats instead of the sturdier rolled oats and added cinnamon and raisins (soaked in boiling water for 10 minutes)! When I make them again I will try to reduce the sugar by half because with my raisin addition they were a little too sweet (totally on me). I am very impressed with this recipe and grateful that the author provided measurements in grams because it saved me so much clean up and the cookies came together in a couple of minutes. Thank you so much for all of your hard work creating this recipe, I don’t know that my version is very similar to the original, probably a little less chewy and more crumbly due to the instant oat swap, but very very yummy!!
Awesome! Thanks for sharing Jess!
Hi, I have yet to try this recipe but I’d like to ask if the sugars (white & brown) in this recipe can be substituted with coconut sugar? Thank you.
Hi Gab, it ‘should’ work okay as coconut sugar is very similar, but it hasn’t been tested with coconut sugar.