True story:
I was once on national television… in my underwear. 😕
It was when I was 5 years old, on a popular children’s show similar to Sesame Street. The goal of the segment was to teach young children how to get dressed by themselves: this was in the early 90s, therefore footage is thankfully not immortalized online.
Possibly even more fun than the filming process was when the show aired and everyone reconvened for a viewing party. One child’s mother brought in three plates of gooey chocolate chip cookie bars for the occasion, and not a single person left that day without having asked for the recipe. The bars would become a staple in my childhood home for many years afterwards.
Today’s recipe is a healthy makeover of those addictive chocolate chip cookie bars.
I played around to find the perfect amount of applesauce to lower the fat, calories, and sugar while still maintaining the bars’ seductively gooey texture. The subtly-strong flavor of the surprise ingredient—molasses!—takes these bars completely over the top.
They are sure to win you over!
Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars
Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 cups spelt or all-purpose flour (180g) (oat flour works; the texture is just a bit gummier)
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/4 cup rolled oats (20g)
- 1/2 cup brown sugar or date sugar (90g)
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 cup to 1 cup chocolate chips, depending on how chocolatey you want the bars to be
- 1/2 cup vegetable or coconut oil (80g)
- 1/2 cup applesauce (120g)
- 2 tsp pure vanilla extract (9g)
- pinch stevia, or 2 tbsp sugar of choice
- 3 tbsp blackstrap or regular molasses (43g)
Instructions
Preheat the oven to 325 degrees and line the bottom of an 8×8 pan with parchment paper, then set aside. In a mixing bowl, stir together the first 6 ingredients. In a separate bowl, whisk together all liquid ingredients, then pour wet over dry and stir to form a batter. Spoon into the prepared pan. Bake 25 minutes. Makes 15-24 squares, depending on how large you cut them. (The ones in the photos are cut from 24.) I love the unique molasses flavor in these bars, but you can always substitute pure maple syrup or agave or honey (vegans don’t use honey) if you’d prefer.
Link Of The Day:
I just put these in the oven now. My 18 month old “helped” me make them and thoroughly enjoyed licking the spoon when we were done. Can’t wait for them to come out of the oven!!
Hi,
I love love love your recipes and have made two or three of them so far. I made these Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars and while they were delicious they were very moist. In your photo they appear more cake-like. Any thoughts?
Thanks again, I’m addicted to CCK!
These bars are chewy and soft and gooey… Kind of like a soft chewy oatmeal cookie. I’m not sure if that’s the “moist” you meant, but if you want them drier you can always leave them out overnight barely covered.
I just made these and they turned out very oily and not right. I am confused as I followed the directions. Perhaps I was not supposed to use regular coconut oil – did I miss some piece of information?? Used Trader Joe’s Extra Virgin coconut oil…
You may want to check out the troubleshoot comments in the Recipe FAQ section at the top of Katie’s blog. Here’s the link:
https://lett-trim.today/faq-page/recipe-questions-and-troubleshooting/%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E
Hi,thank you so much, for all those healthy and yummy recipes! georgia!!
First of all… Amazingly beautiful picture my dear! You are truly a natural beauty…
Second, these are delicious!!! I did a little experimenting with a few ingredients and came out with some great results! I substituted the spelt flour for barley flour (I was out of spelt!) The other swap I made was on the brown sugar. I substituted the same amount(by weight) in dried pitted dates. Threw all the wet ingredients into my Ninja blender and pureed till it was super smooth. Results were AWESOME!! These remind me of those Keebler Soft Batch cookies I used to eat as a kid! Thank you for a delicious recipe Katie! You’re awesome…
Thanks, Kira! And I absolutely love your date idea. Might have to try it! 🙂
I made these and loved them 🙂 Definitely one of my favorite recipes of yours that I’ve tried!
I was wondering if I needed to melt the coconut oil before measuring. I made your quinoa chocolate chip cookies and they were delicious but melted into the pan. Want to try these and want to know if it’s more accurate to melt first. Thank you!
Melt first is best.
I made these Bars today and am pleased to report that they turned out moist and looked exactly like the photo – which is uncommon today on most food blogs. When it came to the ingredients – used all-purpose flour [as I could not find spelt flour] and went with vegetable oil instead of coconut oil [a matter of availability again]; I also used brown sugar vs. date sugar and regular molasses; and I substituted carob chips (using 3/4 cup). It is definitely necessary to use parchment paper too – the bars will stick if you don’t. As for the oven temperature – I found baking them at 350 degrees produced a less gummy bar for my personal taste buds; a temp of 325 yielded bars that seemed somewhat underdone to me. Overall, a nice alternative and yes, it does have a molasses flavor even though the recipe only calls for a mere three tablespoons.
Same here – baking at 325 didn’t seem to do it. I upped the temp and baked for a while longer, until it looked like the pictures here. They were great! So just go ahead and bake it a little longer if it seems underdone.
(Note: my oven temperature isn’t off. I did a deep dish cookie pie afterwards at the temp listed in that recipe, and the baking time there was perfect).
Hi Katie! These look amazing on your blog and I could not wait to try them! I just made these and instead of a “batter” I got a crumbly mixture. Do you have any tips? I feel like there wasn’t enough liquid or something to actually bake in the mix. But I’m not gonna lie that crumbly mix is still delishh!
You may want to check the troubleshoot comments in the Recipe FAQ section at the top of Katie’s blog. Here’s the link:
https://lett-trim.today/faq-page/recipe-questions-and-troubleshooting/%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E
Hello, I don’t have any applesauce in my kitchen (neither me or my kids like to eat it) so I was wondering if you think it would be o.k. to use 1 cup of coconut oil to make up for the other 1/2 cup applesauce? I have yogurt, maybe 1/2 cup of that would be better? Thanks!
So, I went on a CCK baking marathon this weekend. I made your healthy blueberry muffins, oatmeal muffins, banana bread doughnuts (as muffins because I don’t have donut pans…womp womp) and these…twice!
I enjoyed them, as did my friends whom I invited over (not just the oatmeal bars but the other things as well) to help me eat all the baked goods (because I assure you I didn’t bake it all for myself, lol). The first time I made them with whole wheat pastry flour and they came out fine. Second time was with AP flour but I didn’t really try it (baked it too late to snack on it :).
If I had the proper ingredients, I would have made even more stuff. 🙂
I have a church get together Friday night – I’m thinking about making these and bringing them! Thing is, I don’t have parchment paper or a car with which to go get some (poor college student here)… would aluminum foil work instead?
PS – I love all your recipes that I’ve tried! 🙂
These were insanely good! And you just might have made an applesauce convert out of me! 😉
Katie, I would love to make these but don’t want to use the 1/2 cup of oil. What would you recommend I substitute? Or can I just leave it out completely?
Oh my gosh you look gorgeous in that photo! You have the prettiest smile!
Hi there, I made these cookies and while they are delicious they have more calories than is posted, and I was just thinking it might not be a bad idea to correct your listing. I put the ingredients into my fitness pal, and with 1/2 cup of chocolate chips 1/24th of the pan comes out to 130 calories, not 77…that’s almost double! I worried it was too good to be true and now I am extra regretting eating half the pan yesterday. I have another batch in the oven now too….yes they are that good! This time I’ll have to work on my portion control. 🙂
The calorie count in the post is correct for the ingredients she used. Online calculator tools are very often inaccurate. See Katie’s Recipe FAQ page at the top of the blog for more details.