Start Your Day with Breakfast Cookies

Think of these oatmeal breakfast cookies as portable porridge with all the toppings. Made with rolled oats, three kinds of seeds, raisins, dates, cinnamon, and some coconut oil, they’re good for more than just breakfast. I’ve been making these for almost a decade now and they’ve been a real staple snack for us.

I’ll have one as a snack at any time of the day, and they’re full of protein and fibre – perfect energy food. If you love oatmeal cookies, you’ll love this super easy, healthy breakfast version. The cookies are soft, surprisingly rich and buttery, and ultra filling despite tasting like dessert. Sunflower seeds add a lot of flavour and a nice shortbread-like bite. 

It’s like a much more convenient form of granola and cookies are always more fun than bars, I think, but I’m sure you could make granola bars out of this too. They’re sweetened only with dates and hold together really nicely.

I first shared this recipe in 2018. It’s been updated with improvements to the recipe instructions and slight improvements to the recipe, new clearer photos including step-by-step photos, and more helpful information.

Ingredients You’ll Need and Why

These are flexible cookies, and you can change the add-ins – cranberries, seeds, spices – to suit your preference. If you keep the dates, oats, and chia seeds, you’ll end up with a tasty cookie that holds well. These are my notes from recipe testing and you can find the full recipe card below with complete measurements and instructions.

How to Make Breakfast Cookies

Be sure to you make the oat flour mix first, before blending the dates – this way you don’t need to clean the food processor in between steps.

Step 1: grind a portion of the oats and sunflower seeds into a fine flour. Making the cookies without a food processor is outlined below, but these really do work best with one. Pictured is a small food processor addition for an immersion blender and it’s great here.

Step 2: combine the oat flour mixture with the remaining dry ingredients and stir to combine. If you want to have cranberries incorporated into more bites of the cookies, roughly chop them first rather than using whole dried cranberries.

Step 3: puree the dates and other wet ingredients to a paste. I think the small food processor attachment is even more effective for this than a standard food processor, and an immersion blender in a blending container works too. Bullet blenders can also be used but a standing blender typically won’t.

Step 4: blend the date mixture into the dry ingredients and mix very well to combine. It’ll seem a little too dry at first but it will come together. Let the cookie dough rest for a few minutes while the oven preheats so that the chia can hydrate.

Step 5: form into balls, flatten slightly, and place onto a lined cookie sheet. Note that the cookies won’t spread much at all so they can be close together and must be flattened to the right thickness before baking.

Step 6: bake until just lightly golden and cool fully before storing or serving. The cookies will be crumbly until cooled.

If you can’t see the recipe video, please watch it here on YouTube instead.

Expert Tips for the Best Cookies

• Add milk if needed: you should be able to form cookies without the mixture crumbling, so if it’s dry – especially after making any substitutions – add another splash of milk.
• Only switch up the add-ins: the cookies will be best if you follow the base recipe and only change the additions, like the pumpkin seeds, whole sunflower seeds, and spices. If at all possible, keep the amounts of oats, sunflower seeds for grinding, dates, and oil the same for predictable results.
• Make your own oat flour: these do turn out best when you grind the oat flour yourself, as it’s a bit coarser than store-bought, and makes for a better texture. While pre-made oat flour can be used, the cookies usually turn out a little dry and crumbly.
• Don’t worry about a green middle: sometimes the ground sunflower seeds will react to the baking soda, and the centre of the cookies will turn slightly green. This is normal and not a sign of spoilage.

Make Without a Food Processor

I get this question a lot, and you can indeed make breakfast cookies without a food processor! There are just a few more steps.

First, use pre-ground oat flour, which you can buy almost everywhere these days. Then switch out the sunflower seeds that you’d be grinding up to form part of the base with almond flour or another nut meal – this takes away the nut-free element, but I’ve never seen seed flour to buy.

Mash the dates with a fork, soaking them ahead of time if needed, and melt the coconut oil. Mix everything in a large bowl, and you’re good to go. If your dates are on the dryer side, or the mixture seems too crumbly, add a couple extra tablespoons of milk. Mixing by hand doesn’t bring the cookies together quite as well as in a food processor, so a little extra liquid might be needed.

If you don’t want to go through the extra steps, try these trail mix cookies (made with buckwheat flour) instead.

More Date-Sweetened Recipes

• Oatmeal Breakfast Brownies – made with oats and sunflower seeds, the base is similar to this recipe, but the brownies are surprisingly fudgy, chocolate-filled, and truly excellent
• Gluten-free Chocolate Peanut Butter Cookies – just six ingredients and no flour, these are made with peanut butter, dates, cocoa, and a couple add-ins
• Coconut Banana Bread – with whole grain spelt flour, chocolate chips, and dates
• Peanut Butter Banana Oatmeal Cookies – chewy, lightly sweet cookies sweetened only with fruit

If you make these Oatmeal Breakfast Cookies or any other vegetarian breakfast recipes on Occasionally Eggs, please take a moment to rate the recipe and leave a comment below. It’s such a help to others who want to try the recipe. For more OE, follow along on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest, purchase the Occasionally Eggs cookbook, or subscribe for new posts via email.