This sugar free oatmeal cookies recipe is sweet from the mashed bananas and chocolate chips with a soft and chewy texture.
The sugar intake has been reduced in these classic oatmeal cookies, highlighting the natural flavor of the bananas. Only 5 ingredients!
If you love more chocolate chip cookies try our family's favorite Oatmeal Banana Cookies, decadent Italian Ricotta Cookies, and double Chocolate M&Ms Cookies next.
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Rita's Notes
These homemade cookies are not the type of sugarless cookies in which you add maple syrup, honey, applesauce, or artificial sweetener to compensate for the sweetness.
On the contrary, these healthy flourless sugar-free oatmeal cookies are made with natural ingredients.
We add bananas for a naturally sweet flavor, along with dark chocolate chips, which are optional here or can be substituted with naturally sweet raisins (just make sure the dried raisins are without added sugar!).
For the healthier and basic cookies, you’ll only need 4 ingredients.
If you like raisins, try our moist Cinnamon Banana Bread (with raisins) and Oatmeal Raisin Cookies next time.
Freeze old bananas!
These sugarless cookies are a great way to use that leftover ripened banana full of black spots. It has been years since I learned the trick to preserve old bananas by freezing them whole. All you need to do after freezing is defrost them and use them in your favorite cookies, bread, and pies.
Ingredients
- Bananas - these flourless cookies do not contain white sugar, brown sugar, or any other refined sugar. Bananas are great for naturally adding sweetness to baking goods. You’ll need about 2 large, overripe, mashed bananas. Banana + black spots = sweet cookies!
- Peanut butter - I’ve used creamy peanut butter, but you could use crunchy peanut butter instead. Go for a good-quality natural peanut butter with just salt and peanuts or just peanuts. Take care to check the ingredient labels, and use unsweetened and unsalted peanut butter for a healthier option.
- Vanilla extract - use high-quality pure vanilla extract. And yes, it matters.
- Oats - old-fashioned oats are nutritious and preferred for these cookies, but you can use quick oats, too, when in a pinch (the texture will be different). I like to use Bob's Red Mill or Quaker Oats here, as well as gluten-free or regular oats.
- Chocolate chips - you can use dark, unsweetened, or diabetes-friendly chocolate chips, dark, milk, or white chocolate chips (these are with sugar). Increase the chips to ¾ cups for extra chocolate indulgence! Unsweetened raisins or cacao nibs can be used instead of chocolate chips.
For the full list of ingredients, please scroll down where you'll find the recipe card.
If you don’t like cookies chunky, use oat flour instead. You can make your own oat flour at home in two easy steps. Take your favorite rolled oats and pulse them in a food processor or coffee/spice grinder until the oats turn into a fine powder. That’s it!
How To Make Sugarless Oatmeal Cookies
How to make sugar-free oatmeal cookies from scratch:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Line a large baking sheet lined with parchment paper.
- Step 1: In a large bowl add mashed bananas, peanut butter, vanilla, and oats. Mix well with an electric mixer, stand mixer, or food processor on low speed until combined.
- Fold in chocolate chips.
- Step 3: Prepare a small bowl with warm water. Dip your hands in water and shape 15 balls, about the (size of a walnut). Spread the cookie balls in a single layer on the cookie sheet leaving about 1 ½ inches in between each cookie dough ball.
- Step 4: Gently press down the cookies to flatten them and shape (these cookies won't spread as much during baking).
- Step 5: Bake for 10-12 minutes. Remove and allow the cookies to cool on a cooling rack.
Store in an airtight container refrigerated for up to 5 days. Let it come to room temperature before eating. You can also freeze these for up to 3 months. Defrost in the fridge overnight and let it come to room temperature.
Tips
- I’ve rolled these cookies to the size of a walnut, but you can adjust the size for larger cookies which will then require an extra minute to bake.
- Use a cookie scoop to create uniform-sized cookies.
- I wet my hands before rolling the cookie dough, which helps to prevent the dough from sticking to hands.
- Don’t leave these cookies out for long at room temperature, as they contain bananas. You could also chill the cookie dough before rolling it to reduce the sticky texture.
- For a more healthy oatmeal cookie leave the chocolate chips out.
- You can easily double the ingredients to make an extra batch of oatmeal cookies and store them in the freezer to enjoy whenever you like.
- If you use natural peanut butter in this recipe, mix any oil that has settled at the top of the jar back into the rest of the peanut butter. If you don’t, the butter will be dry, which can cause crumbly cookies. This being said, not all-natural peanut butter has the same consistency.
- You can add natural sugar alternatives if you want sweeter-tasting cookies, such as maple syrup, date paste, maltitol syrup, stevia, applesauce (just a bit in addition), or monk fruit.
- These cookies will become firmer as they cool. To make them softer, I like to warm them in the microwave or low-temperature oven.
- For more natural sweeteners, consider adding finely chopped dates or pureed dates (they taste better than caramel!) or raisins.
- Flavor too sweet? If you are making the batter and after tasting it, the cookie dough seems too sweet, add chopped cranberries, as their tartness will balance the sweetness pretty well. You can also omit the chocolate chips or add them only to half a batch of the cookies.
- I don't recommend adding more salt as this will intensify all the flavors, including the sweetness.
Peanut butter and mashed bananas are essential in this recipe as these wet ingredients act as binding agents. They are important since this recipe doesn't call for an egg, vegetable oil, or milk.
Are Sugar-Free Oatmeal Cookies Good For You?
These delicious oatmeal cookies are suitable for many diets and people with food intolerances. These cookies are:
- Healthy
- No wheat flour
- Easy
- Eggless
- No flour cookies
- Dairy-free
- Refined sugar-free
- They are also naturally gluten-free and mostly healthy if you use the best quality ingredients. We only need four here, not counting the chocolate, which is optional. If you follow a gluten-free diet, check the oats for GF certified labels.
Freezing and Storing Instructions
- Store in an airtight container refrigerated for up to 5 days. Let the cookies come to room temperature before eating.
- To Freeze. You can also freeze these for up to 3 months. Defrost in the fridge overnight and let it come to room temperature.
Variations and Substitutions
- Swap the vanilla extract to the almond extract for some delicious nutty flavor.
- Shredded coconut or coconut flakes will add tons of new flavors.
- Turn these cookies into oatmeal raisin cookies by adding about ½ cup of raisins.
- Lemon, lime, or orange zest is a classic flavor enhancer for any cookie. And great for a fresh aroma.
- Mix-Ins - Swap the chocolate chips for more naturally sweet ingredients such as raisins or dried fruit. Dried cranberries will work too. Chopped nuts such as hazelnuts, sliced almonds or almond flakes, peanuts, walnuts or pecans will work best here.
- Banana puree can be substituted with pumpkin puree or sweet potato. In the end, this is what gives the cookies their naturally sweet taste.
- To make the cookies more flavorful add a pinch of salt to the cookie dough.
- Peanut butter can be substituted to chocolate peanut butter or almond butter.
- Make these cookies a complete nutrient powerhouse by adding a mix of nuts and seeds - flaxseeds, chia seeds, pumpkin seeds (pepitas), and sunflower seeds. Goji berries are one of my favorites to add to cookies too.
- Use oat flour - for smoother cookies, grind those rolled oats into a fine powder with a spice/coffee bean grinder or use a food processor.
- Make it vegan-friendly - use dairy-free chocolate chips to make vegan oatmeal cookies.
- If you feel you need more sweetness or bananas are not ripe enough (lots of sweet flavors come from bananas), then you can add liquid sweeteners: honey, maple syrup, or agave syrup. You only need a little, and you can easily taste the cookie dough as all the ingredients are edible in their raw and unbaked form.
Easy Baking Recipes
Craving more healthy baking recipes? Try our Cottage Cheese Cookies and Carrot Cake Muffins.
Take a look at our Baking archives to find even more tasty treats.
📖Recipe
Best Sugar Free Oatmeal Cookies With Peanut Butter (5 Ingredients!)
Ingredients
- 2 large overripe bananas, mashed
- ⅓ cup peanut butter, creamy
- ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 ¾ cup old-fashioned rolled oats
- ¼ cup sugar free chocolate chips, or cacao nibs
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Line a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.
- In a large bowl add mashed bananas, peanut butter, vanilla, and oats. Mix well with an electric mixer, stand mixer, hand mixer, or food processor on low speed until combined. Fold in chocolate chips.2 large overripe bananas, ⅓ cup peanut butter, ½ teaspoon vanilla extract, 1 ¾ cup old-fashioned rolled oats, ¼ cup sugar free chocolate chips
- Prepare a small bowl with warm water. Dip your hands in water and shape 15 balls, about the (size of a walnut).
- Spread the cookie balls in a single layer on the cookie sheet leaving about 1 ½ inches in between each cookie dough ball. Gently press down the cookies to flatten them and shape (these cookies won't spread as much during baking).
- Bake for 10-12 minutes. Remove and allow the cookies to cool on a cooling rack.
- Store in an airtight container refrigerated for up to 5 days. Let it come to room temperature before eating. You can also freeze these for up to 3 months. Defrost in the fridge overnight and let it come to room temperature.
Notes
- I wet my hands before rolling the cookie dough, which helps to prevent the dough from sticking to my hands.
- Don’t leave these cookies out for long at room temperature, as they have bananas in the cookie dough. To reduce the sticky texture, you could also chill the cookie dough before rolling it.
- For a more healthy cookie leave the chocolate chips out.
- You can easily double the ingredients to make an extra batch of oatmeal cookies and store them in the freezer to enjoy whenever you like.
- These cookies will become firmer as they cool. I like to warm up the cookies in the microwave or low temp warm oven, just to make them softer.
- These cookies should be stored at room temperature in an airtight for up to a week. You can even freeze the cookies for a couple of months.
- Why are my sugar-free cookies not soft and chewy?
These cookies are not meant to be chewy because they contain 0 refined sugar which is the ingredient that makes the cookies chewy during baking.
Nutrition
Did you make this recipe? Please be sure to leave a rating and a comment below. Thank you!
FAQ
These sugarless cookies are approximately 99kcal per serving.
The best way to make your oatmeal sweet is to add mashed bananas, sugar-free chocolate chips, cinnamon, vanilla extract, and dried fruit (without sugar addition).
Homemade sugar-free cookies are healthier than store-bought ones -it's a fact. Packaged cookies are loaded with unhealthy artificial sweeteners and flavor enhancers.
Baking without sugar is easy, with little trial and error. Add natural sweeteners, applesauce, and mashed bananas to your baked goods.
Just saw your recipe and immediately went to make them!! They are delicious!! I used raisins instead of chocolate and let them bake about 5 minutes longer because I like a crunchy cookie!! They are awesome and I will be making them often, at least once a week! My husband loves them too!!
thank you Rachel, these are the best!