Gluten Free Peanut Butter Breakfast Cookies

By srumbel

A gluten-free, healthy breakfast cookie made with peanut butter and old-fashioned oats as the base. There is no flour, no butter, no white sugar, and no oil included! These cookies are baked for 5-7 minutes and take less than 10 minutes prep time.
from chelseasmessyapron.com

Ingredients

• 1 cup creamy peanut butter*
• 2 tablespoons honey
• 4 tablespoons light brown sugar
• 1/2 cup old-fashioned oats
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 large egg
• 1/2 cup peanut butter chips + chocolate chips (Nestle has this combo)

Preparation

Step 1

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
In a medium sized bowl stir together the peanut butter, honey, and brown sugar. Do NOT warm up the peanut butter or the honey.
Add in the oats, salt, baking soda, baking powder, and vanilla extract. Stir well.
In a separate bowl lightly beat the egg and then add it to the mixture.
Stir in desired add-ins (I used a peanut butter and chocolate chip mixture), but you can use dark chocolate chips, raisins, craisins, peanuts, etc.
The mixture will be thick and hard to stir. Continue stirring until combined and then use a cookie scoop to scoop out the dough. Press the dough very tightly in the cookie scoop to form the balls. Without a cookie scoop these tend to crumble.
If not using a cookie scoop you will have to work with the dough a little bit more by squeezing it into a ball.
Form the small balls onto a cookie sheet and bake for 5-7 minutes.
Watch the cookies closely and remove when the bottom barely starts to brown even if they don’t look completely done (they cook more as they cool). I burned a few cookies by not watching them – they look underdone and 30-60 seconds later they are burned! (TIP: I also found cooking smaller batches – like 6 on a tray worked the best)
Remove and allow to cool completely.

I did find that these cookies had the tendency to be a little bit crumbly. Here’s how you avoid that! First of all, use a cookie scoop!! Pack the dough into the scoop into a tight ball. Release the scoop onto a tray and then very lightly flatten the top.

Next, make sure to let them cool completely before picking them up and eating them. If you want them hot out of the oven, you’ll just have to deal with a little bit of crumbliness!


Notes
Check the post on how to avoid “crumbly” cookies! Also, I have not experimented with a natural or no-stir version of peanut butter and would not recommend it.