These healthy honey oatmeal cookies are thin and crispy. The cookies are easy to make and only need 3 ingredients. They don’t need any flour, eggs, refined sugar, butter or oil. The cookies store well and can be enjoyed for breakfast, snack or dessert.
These lightly sweetened crispy oatmeal cookies are flavored with honey. They are a new favorite oatmeal cookie in my house. I especially love how easy they are to make.
Ingredients
- Honey
- Quick Oats
- Cashew butter (or peanut butter or almond butter)
Honey: The oatmeal cookies are lightly sweetened with honey. If you need a substitute for honey, I also have a version that uses maple syrup.
Quick oats: The cookies use quick oats. Rolled oats can also be used but I like using quick oats because they are thinner and smaller than rolled oats. The oats are run through the food processor to make them even smaller, which helps them get crispy during baking.
Cashew butter: Make sure you use natural cashew butter. This is cashew butter with no added oils. It should just be cashews listed in the ingredients. Cashew butter can be substituted with natural peanut butter or natural almond butter. I chose to use cashew butter because I find that the flavor of cashew is very mild so you can taste the honey better. With almond butter and peanut butter, I felt like the flavors of the almonds/peanuts were very strong and it was harder to taste the honey.
How to Make Honey Oatmeal Cookies
- The oats are first run through a food processor until they become very small pieces, with some of it turning into a powder/flour.
- All the ingredients are added together and mixed until a thick dough forms.
- Use a 1 tablespoon cookie scoop to scoop the dough and release onto your prepared baking sheet.
- The cookie dough is then rolled into a smooth ball and flattened with your palm or with the back of a metal spoon. You want to make the cookies very thin. The thinner they are, the crispier they will be.
- The cookies are then ready to be baked. The full set of instructions and measurements are at the end of the post in the recipe card.
Cookie Texture and Sweetness
The cookies are light, delicate and crispy. They are not super firm and crunchy. The cookies are also only lightly sweetened since they are meant to be healthy cookies. You can add a little more honey for sweeter cookies but adding too much will prevent the cookies from crisping up.
More Crispy Oatmeal Cookie Recipes
- 3 Ingredient Healthy Crispy Oatmeal Cookies
- 4 Ingredient Crispy Lemon Oatmeal Cookies
- 4 Ingredient Crispy Coconut Oatmeal Cookies
3 Ingredient Crispy Honey Oatmeal Cookies
Ingredients
- 3/4 cup (70 g) quick oats
- 6 tbsp (92 g) natural cashew butter or natural peanut butter or almond butter
- 2 1/2 tbsp (37 ml) honey
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350°F (177°C). Line a large cookie sheet with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat.
- Add quick oats to a food processor. Pulse oats until they become very small and fine and start to partially become flour consistency. See photo in post for reference. I pulsed mine on high for about 30 seconds. If you are unsure if your oats are fine enough, it's better to pulse them a little longer. The smaller they are, the crispier the cookies will be.
- Add oats, cashew butter and honey to a large mixing bowl. Make sure you scrape the food processor and get all of the oat powder that sticks to the sides into your bowl. Mix with a spatula until the ingredients are fully and evenly incorporated and the dough thickens to the consistency of cookie dough.
- Using a 1 tbsp cookie scoop, scoop dough onto the prepared cookie sheet, spacing the dough balls about 2 inches apart. Use your palm or the back of a metal spoon to flatten the dough balls into round disks. You want the cookies to be fairly thin, about 1/8 inch thick and no more than 3/16 inch thick. The thinner the cookies are, the crispier they will be. The cookies do not spread much during baking, so shape them as you want the final outcome to be. I usually flatten the cookies first with my palm a few times and then smooth around the edges with the back of a spoon to make the cookies round.
- Bake cookies for 10-11 minutes or until the surface looks done and the edges turn light brown. The browner the cookies get, the crispier they will be but you want to be careful not to burn them. Let cookies cool completely on the baking sheet before removing them. They will crisp up further as they cool.
Notes
- Make sure to use natural cashew butter or natural peanut butter or natural almond butter. This is nut butter that has no added oils. The dough will not thicken correctly if you use cashew/peanut/almond butter with added oils.
- You can also use rolled oats in place of quick oats.
- Products used to make this recipe:
- 365 Whole Foods Cashew butter*
- Kirkland signature organic raw honey
- OXO 1 tbsp cookie scoop*
- Miu silicone baking mat*
- *This product link is an affiliate link. This means I earn a commission from qualifying purchases.
Nutrition
The nutrition information provided are only estimates based on an online nutritional calculator. I am not a certified nutritionist. Please consult a professional nutritionist or doctor for accurate information and any dietary restrictions and concerns you may have.
I would like to make this with a powdered peanut butter, how would I change the above to make it stay together? Also might like to add a few dried cranberries or raisons. How would that change. I am not a very good baker -LOL – need all the help I can get.
We have not tested this recipe with powdered peanut butter so we are unsure what the amounts would need to be! We have had other readers add nuts (they said that they grinded them to keep the consistency) or raisins and had good results so you could give it a try!
Can I use maple syrup instead of honey?
We have another recipe that you can use maple syrup! Find it here: https://kirbiecravings.com/3-ingredient-crispy-oatmeal-cookies/
Amazing and very filling cookies. Will be honest- was not expecting much from this recipe. I was proven so wrong though! Me and the kids absolutely love them. And because it’s a simple recipe, you can tweak it to satisfy different cravings. I’ve made couple of batches with different flavours. You can add nuts and seeds(I just grind them to keep the consistency). I also added lemon juice and zest to one batch and drizzled cookies with white chocolate after cooling and so far that is my most favourite batch. My daughter preferred nutty one with added raisins and dates drizzled with dark chocolate. Possibilities are endless! What is amazing as well is that you could easily NOT bake cookies but rather turn them into energy balls rolled in sesame seeds/ground almond(I tried it and when you add one tablespoon less of peanut butter it holds the shape better and tastes still divine). I’ve tried these with maple syrup instead of honey too.
I mean, this recipe is like a playground for those who love to experiment. Thank you for sharing it with us!!!!
Thank you for sharing all the variations you’ve made! So glad your family is enjoying the recipe!
Could you use maple syrup instead of honey?
You should try this recipe: https://kirbiecravings.com/3-ingredient-crispy-oatmeal-cookies/
Do you think sunflower seed butter would work? A friends son is allergic to nuts (along with dairy and egg).
Yes that should work
Do you think you could just add the nut butter and honey into the food processor with the processed oats, and just make the dough in the food processor?
You definitely can! I preferred making it in a bowl because it is a little bit of extra work trying to get all the dough out of the food processor and I felt like I lost less dough making it in a bowl.
I used regular chunky peanut butter because that’s what I had.
Ground down the oats to a fine flour, so didn’t have any problem making them into cookies.
I eat oat cakes all the time because of my gluten intolerance, and these are the best I ever had.
Next time I’m going to bake at 325 and check them after 8 minutes.
Excellent and easy!!
So glad you like them!
I love these recipes
Thanks!
I love these recipes!.
Can you use maple syrup if you don’t have honey?
You should try this recipe instead: https://kirbiecravings.com/3-ingredient-crispy-oatmeal-cookies/