These healthy strawberry & oatmeal protein bars are made with only 5 ingredients. Convenient and quick, this delicious snack packs a lot of nutrients and is guaranteed to fill you up until lunch on a busy day. Vegan, Gluten-Free, Dairy-free and flourless these bars are friendly to most popular diet trends.
Protein bars are very popular in the house. They are compact and fill you up quickly so you can get back to whatever you were doing within 5 minutes. They are also a great way to add more protein to your diet, which is always an issue for me as I train a lot, and must eat a ton of food.
One thing that always bugged me about most store-bought protein bars though is that they don’t provide many nutrients, if at all! Sure, they will fill you up and you will get your protein fix, but that’s pretty much it. And have you ever stopped to read the ingredients list?
Yeah. Well. When you can’t pronounce half of the words on a nutrition label, that is NOT a good sign!
Yes, there ARE nutritious protein bars on the market. They exist. But get ready to spend ridiculous amounts of cash, most of the times.
As I started to care about the quality of the food we eat, I stopped buying protein bars from the store and both my body and wallet said thank you!
Now, every Sunday I include snacks like these strawberry protein bars or these vegan vanilla fudge bars in my meal prep for the week. Simple, quick, healthy, done!
Strawberry Protein Bars
They say we should drink a glass of water on an empty stomach every morning to boost our metabolism. Do that instead of drowning yourself in coffee, you will thank yourself!
(Get that coffee later if you need to but please, don’t ever drink coffee on an empty stomach as it will force your stomach to produce acid like crazy!)
Another great way to stimulate your metabolism is by getting a dose of berries every morning. They are full of vitamins, antioxidants and fibers, which help greatly in that matter.
These bars are choke-full of berries, fibers and protein. All the good stuff your body needs in the morning after 8-10 long hours of fasting.
Grab one or two of these bars on your way out to work for a complete, healthy breakfast.
For this recipe I used fresh strawberries, but you can use the same amount of frozen strawberries, the result will be the same.
Fresh strawberries are tastier though, obviously. Even more so during summer when these fruits are in season. But if you are in a rush, frozen is perfectly fine.
How I prefer these protein bars?
Cold!
They taste so much better when left in the fridge overnight. They get softer, more tender and moist.
For this recipe I used vanilla flavored protein powder, but strawberry flavor could be good too, especially if you’re using frozen strawberries.
Which protein powder to use?
Use whatever you have on hand, it does not matter!
Although for this recipe to be vegan, you will have to use plant-based protein powder, obviously.
Important: use traditional oatmeal. Do NOT use instant oatmeal! Instant oatmeal isn’t healthy at all, might as well use all-purpose flour, it’s how bad this stuff is.
Yes, instant oatmeal is better than traditional for baking… Unless you know this simple trick: Process about half of the oatmeal in a mixer for 1-2 seconds. That way the texture will be pretty similar!
Strawberry Protein Bars
- 2 cups rolled oats
- 2 1/2 cups strawberries (mashed)
- 1 cup vanilla protein powder*
- 3 tbsp maple syrup
- 4 tbsp almond butter
- 1/4 cup almond milk
- Optional: 2 Ounces dark chocolate (70% or more)
- Preheat oven to 350F.
- Line a baking pan** with parchment paper.
- Process half of the rolled oats in a mixer or food processor for 1/2 seconds. Don’t turn it into a fine flour, it has to keep some texture.
- Combine all of the ingredients in a large bowl, mix well.
- Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out moist with small crumbles.
- Optional: Melt dark chocolate and drizzle it over the bars.
* For the vegan version, use plant-based protein powder. Only use 1 cup rolled oats if doing so.
** I used a 10-inch square baking pan.
Nutrition information is calculated for the bars only, without additional toppings.
I tried this recipe and they taste absolutely yummy 😋
My only issue was with how moist they were. I think next time I will drain all the juice from the strawberries
Suzanne
Hey, I love your recipe it tastes delicious I used vegan strawberry protein powder with the strawberries & used half the amount of oats. At the very end towards the last 5 minutes I added coconut flakes then when cooled drizzled the dark chocolate! 😀
However, I’m trying to find the serving size amount, it shows you only put 1 gram? Lol if you could email me back that’d be amazing!
Thank you!!
Hi Ciera, serving size is for 1 out of 8 bars. Enjoy!
How long do these last? Since you use fresh fruit instead of dried fruit, do they have to be kept in the fridge?