An easy recipe for high altitude breakfast cookies, made with oats, peanut butter, seeds and nuts, and lightly sweetened with applesauce and pure maple syrup. These healthy cookies are perfect for a grab and go breakfast, made with nourishing ingredients to start the day.
You might also love these recipes for maple vanilla grain free granola, low sugar frozen chocolate almond butter bites, and toasted trail mix.
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Why You’ll Love This Recipe
Wholesome Ingredients and Not Too Sweet. Let me be clear. These are not sweet dessert cookies. In fact, they’re barely sweetened, just from a little applesauce, maple syrup and dried fruit. These breakfast cookies or good morning cookies are more like a soft granola bar, baked as cookies.
Quick and Easy. The dough or batter comes together easily with just a bowl and spoon.
High Altitude Tested. I develop all the recipes on my site for Denver’s altitude of 5,280 feet. If you’re at a lower or higher elevation, please see my FAQs for guidance on adjusting recipes for your altitude.
See the recipe card at the end of the post for the full ingredients list and instructions.
Ingredients
- Peanut Butter. I used a natural creamy peanut butter (Adam’s is my favorite), but you can also use almond butter, cashew butter, or your favorite brand of creamy peanut butter.
- Applesauce. You’ll want unsweetened applesauce for this recipe.
- Maple Syrup. Use pure maple syrup, not maple flavored high fructose corn syrup or pancake syrup.
- Eggs.
- Vanilla Extract.
- Oats. Use old fashioned rolled oats, not quick oats or steel cut oats.
- Dried Fruit. The dried fruit will add a bit of sweetness. I used dried apricots, but you could also use raisins or sweetened dried cranberries.
- Seeds and Nuts. You can use many varieties of seeds and nuts in these cookies. I used a combination of walnuts (or pecans), pumpkin seeds and flax seeds.
- Spices. Cinnamon, allspice, baking soda and salt.
Instructions
- In a bowl, stir together the peanut butter, applesauce, maple syrup, eggs and vanilla extract, until well combined.
- Using a food processor or Ninja, chop the oats until finely ground.
- Add the ground oats, dried fruit, nuts, seeds, spices, baking soda and salt to the wet ingredients, and stir until combined into a batter. Let sit for 20 minutes to allow the oats to absorb some of the moisture so that the batter thickens.
- Preheat the oven to 350 F, and position a rack in the center of the oven. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.
- Use a large cookie scoop/ice cream scoop with a release lever (2 1/2 – 3 tbsp capacity) to scoop equal portions of the batter onto the baking sheet, leaving 3 inches between each.
- Bake the cookies for about 12-14 minutes, until the cookies are baked through. Do not under-bake. Let the cookies cool on the baking sheet for about 10 minutes, then gently transfer to a cooling rack to cool completely.
- Repeat with the rest of the batter until you’ve baked all the cookies.
Be sure to read all of my BAKING FAQs where I discuss ingredients, substitutions and common baking questions, so that you can be successful in your own baking!
Frequently Asked Questions
Store leftover cookies in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 3-5 days, or in the freezer for up to 3-6 months.
These cookies are very soft and remain soft for days after baking.
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High Altitude Breakfast Cookies
All recipes on Curly Girl Kitchen are developed for high altitude at 5,280 feet. See FAQs for adjusting to higher or lower elevations.
Equipment
- Large Cookie Scoop with Release Lever (3 tbsp capacity)
Ingredients
- ½ cup creamy natural peanut butter or almond butter
- ½ cup unsweetened applesauce
- ¼ cup pure maple syrup
- 2 large eggs
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 cup old fashioned rolled oats, ground in a food processor
- ½ cup raisins, dried sweetened cranberries or chopped dried apricots
- ½ cup chopped walnuts or pecans
- 2 tbsp pumpkin seeds
- 1 tbsp flax seeds
- 1 tsp ground cinnamon
- ¼ tsp ground allspice
- 1 tsp baking soda
- ¾ tsp coarse Kosher salt (if using table salt, use half the amount)
Instructions
- In a bowl, stir together the peanut butter, applesauce, maple syrup, eggs and vanilla extract, until well combined.
- Using a food processor or Ninja, chop the oats until finely ground.
- Add the ground oats, dried fruit, nuts, seeds, spices, baking soda and salt to the wet ingredients, and stir until combined into a batter. Let sit for 20 minutes to allow the oats to absorb some of the moisture so that the batter thickens.
- Preheat the oven to 350 F, and position a rack in the center of the oven. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.
- Use a large cookie scoop/ice cream scoop with a release lever (2 1/2 – 3 tbsp capacity) to scoop equal portions of the batter onto the baking sheet, leaving 3 inches between each.
- Bake the cookies for about 12-14 minutes, until the cookies are baked through. Do not under-bake. Let the cookies cool on the baking sheet for about 10 minutes, then gently transfer to a cooling rack to cool completely.
- Repeat with the rest of the batter until you've baked all the cookies.
Notes
https://curlygirlkitchen.com/
I made these last night and they turned out perfect! They’re not overly sweet so perfect for someone that is trying to cut back on sugar and carbs. Next time I’m going to use Stevia chocolate chips instead of raisins and maybe cut out the cinnamon and allspice. The only adjustment I made was I cut the baking soda in half because my altitude is 9300.
I made these last night and it tasted so good! But I was wondering if I could make the cookies more dense and a little harder, because it turned out very soft, which is great but I wanted to make the texture more into a traditional cookie. I’m not sure if I just under baked mine
These are very soft cookies – baking them for longer doesn’t seem to make them crunchy due to the applesauce and other ingredients. You may be able to make them more dense with more oats.