Vegan Blueberry Breakfast Bars (2024)

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!

Table of contents

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!

1. 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.

2. Prepare the Crust: In a large mixing bowl, combine oat flour, rolled oats, maple syrup, melted coconut oil, salt, and vanilla.

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. Chill the Crust: Place the pan in the fridge while you prepare the blueberry chia seed jam.

6. 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.
7. Mash the blueberries and continue cooking for 2 more minutes, stirring constantly. The jam should slightly thicken but remain runny.

8. Assemble and Bake: Pour the blueberry jam over the crust. Use the remaining dough to crumble evenly over the jam.

9. Bake for 35 minutes or until the top is crispy and golden.

9. Cool and Slice: Allow the bars to cool in the pan for 10 minutes before transferring them to a cooling rack.

10. 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.

About Carine

Hi, I'm Carine, the food blogger, author, recipe developer, photographer, and published author of a cookbook and founder of The Conscious Plant Kitchen with my husband Damien.Learn more about us.