5-Ingredient Vegan Pumpkin Oatmeal Cookies are flourless, dairy-free, refined sugar-free, and egg-free! Healthy oatmeal cookies with a fall twist. This easy recipe results in rich and chewy pumpkin cookies that are healthy enough to eat for breakfast!
Looking for more pumpkin treats to enjoy during pumpkin season? Also try my Gluten-Free Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Bread, Paleo Pumpkin Snickerdoodles, Gluten-Free Rolled Oat Pumpkin Brownies and Pumpkin Baked Oatmeal.
If you’ve tried my 3-Ingredient Oatmeal Cookies, you’re already familiar with the concept here.
Instead of using mashed banana, as is customary in Banana Oatmeal Cookies, we’re swapping it out for canned pumpkin puree.
At a baseline, all you need to make this delicious fall dessert is pureed pumpkin (I use canned), almond butter, pure maple syrup, rolled oats, and pumpkin pie spice.
That’s it! No butter, coconut oil, eggs, or flour.
Toss in some chocolate chips and some pure vanilla extract if you’re feeling wild!
This combination makes a chewy texture, hearty cookie that is loaded with warmly spiced flavor and decadent bursts of chocolate.
Recipe Highlights:
What I love about these cookies is the following characteristics.
- Gluten-Free and Flourless
- Refined Sugar-Free
- Dairy-Free
- Egg-Free
- Oil-Free
- So easy to make!
- Loaded with pumpkin spice flavor
- An amazing caravan for chocolate
- Easy to adapt using other ingredients
An assertive amount of pumpkin pie spice brings all that amazing fall flavor to these healthy cookies!
Which brings me to my next point: Pumpkin pie spice is everything here for generating that iconic pumpkin flavor.
Without it, you don’t get the full experience of that massive pumpkin vibe we’re going for, as it’s the combination of cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves that really level up the flavor profile in pumpkin recipes.
If you aren’t egg-free or vegan and you’re going for the texture of a regular oatmeal cookie, make my Gluten-Free Pumpkin Oatmeal Cookies.
Let’s discuss the simple ingredients needed to make these delicious Vegan Pumpkin Oatmeal Cookies!
Ingredients for Vegan Oatmeal Pumpkin Cookies:
Pumpkin Puree: The reason we’re here! Pumpkin puree brings much moisture content of these oatmeal cookies, as well as volume and flavor.
I use canned pumpkin puree but you can also use homemade pumpkin puree. Just be sure to not use pumpkin pie filling, as it includes loads of other ingredients (including spices and sugar).
Pure Maple Syrup: While these cookies are lower in sugar than your standard dessert, they do require some sweetener so we use pure maple syrup. This also generates a stickiness to help hold the cookies together during the baking process.
Because we need a sticky sweetener, you can replace the pure maple syrup with coconut nectar or agave nectar, but I don’t recommend using a granulated sweetener like white sugar, brown sugar or coconut sugar, as I haven’t tested the recipe with one yet.
Almond Butter: The key to perfect cookies that hold together famously is almond butter (or any nut or seed butter you prefer). Combined with the pure maple syrup, we’re granted an adhesive substance that glues all of the ingredients together without the need for eggs. Not to mention, almond butter provides an explosion of rich flavor!
You can detect a little bit of the flavor but what shines through more than the almond butter is the pumpkin pie spice and chocolate chips.
While you can absolutely swap the almond butter with peanut butter, be aware that peanut butter has a much more distinct flavor in baked recipes, so the flavor will be much more obvious than almond butter.
If you’d like, you can use cashew butter, sunflower seed butter, or walnut butter, depending on what you like.
Rolled Oats: A good deal of old fashioned oats takes the place of flour in these cookies, eliminating the need for all-purpose flour or any other type of flour.
It acts as the solid ingredient that the sticky ingredients bind to and is also an amazing source of complex carbohydrates. Ideal for a pre or post-workout snack.
I use gluten-free sprouted oats, which are also glyphosate-free. For the best results and greatest texture, stick with rolled oats rather than quick oats or instant oats.
Pumpkin Pie Spice: The star of the show here! Pumpkin pie spice is a combination of cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and cloves or allspice. This combination of fall spices brings an array of warm flavors to the cookies and gives us that fall vibe we all love so dearly.
If you don’t have pumpkin pie spice on hand, replace it with ground cinnamon at a minimum. If you have ground ginger, cloves, allspice or nutmeg, you can make your own blend.
Salt: A little sea salt enhances all of the flavors in these chewy pumpkin oatmeal cookies in a big way! Don’t skip it or you’re leaving flavor on the table!
Optional Additions:
Chocolate Chips: While the chocolate chips are purely optional here, I think they add such lovely nuance to create pumpkin oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. For starters, we get a blast of gooey rich chocolate and they also contribute some moisture for a fudgy effect.
I use semi-sweet chocolate chips, but you can use dark chocolate chips, milk chocolate chips, white chocolate chips, or sugar-free chocolate chips depending on what you love. To keep the recipe vegan, you will need to use dairy-free chocolate chips.
To keep the cookies lower in sugar, skip them or replace them with dried cranberries or raisins.
Vanilla Extract: If you have vanilla extract on hand, be sure to add it in! While it isn’t mandatory, it adds greater depth of flavor to really round out the flavor palate.
If you love chopped nuts or dried fruit in your cookies, feel free to add up to 1 cup of chopped walnuts or pecans, or ½ cup of raisins or dried cranberries.
Rich (due to the almond butter), chewy cookie and filled with generous pockets of chocolate goo makes these healthy pumpkin oatmeal cookies simply irresistible!
Now that we’re experts on the ingredients for these delicious vegan oatmeal pumpkin cookies, let’s bake a batch!
How to Make Vegan Pumpkin Oatmeal Cookies:
One of the reasons I love this recipe is the ease with which it is made. You simply mix up the wet ingredients in a large bowl, then dump in all of the dry ingredients. No need for multiple bowls!
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.
Mix together the pumpkin puree, pure maple syrup and almond butter in a mixing bowl until combined and creamy. If adding vanilla extract do so now as well.
Add in the remaining dry ingredients (oats, pumpkin pie spice, salt, and chocolate chips if adding) and mix until everything is well-combined.
The dough will be very wet and will get your hands sticky – this is normal.
Form cookies out of the dough, creating any size you like. I do about ⅓ cup to ½ cup of the cookie dough per cookie to make larger cookies. Form the dough into disc shapes, as the dough will not spread during the baking process and will maintain its shape. If you’d like, top the cookies with extra chocolate chips.
Bake on the center rack of the preheated oven for 10 to 12 minutes, or until the edges are just slightly golden-brown.
Remove pumpkin oatmeal cookies from the oven and allow them to cool completely before removing them from the cookie sheet. If you like the salty sweet combo, sprinkle the cookies with flaky sea salt when they are fresh out of the oven.
Store any leftovers in a zip lock bag on the counter for up to 3 days or in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 1 week. You can also freeze the cookies in a zip lock bag for up to 3 months.
And that’s it! A lovely healthy cookie recipe that is so fun and easy to make, a perfect fall treat project for kids, and delicious for humans of all ages!
If you love recipes with oats, also try out these vegan desserts!
Vegan Dessert Recipes:
- No-Bake Peanut Butter Oatmeal Bars
- Vegan Peach Pie Bars
- Gluten-Free Vegan Peach Cobbler
- Overnight Steel Cut Oats
- 5-Ingredient Blackberry Pie Bars
- Strawberry Oatmeal Bars
Pumpkin spice up your life!
5-Ingredient Vegan Pumpkin Oatmeal Cookies
Ingredients
- 2/3 cup pumpkin puree
- ½ cup pure maple syrup
- ½ cup unsweetened almond butter*
- 2 cups rolled oats
- 1 tsp pumpkin pie spice
- 1/2 tsp sea salt
Optional Additions:
- ½ cup dairy-free chocolate chips
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.
- Mix together the pumpkin puree, pure maple syrup and almond butter in a mixing bowl until combined and creamy.
- Add in the remaining dry ingredients (oats, pumpkin pie spice, salt, and chocolate chips if adding) and mix until everything is well-combined.
- The dough will be very wet and will get your hands sticky – this is normal.
- Form cookies out of the dough, creating any size you like. I do about ⅓ cup to ½ cup of the cookie dough per cookie to make larger cookies. Form the dough into disc shapes, as the dough will not spread during the baking process and will maintain its shape. If you’d like, top the cookies with extra chocolate chips.
- Bake on the center rack of the preheated oven for 10 to 12 minutes, or until the edges are just slightly golden-brown.
- Remove pumpkin oatmeal cookies from the oven and allow them to cool completely before removing them from the cookie sheet. If you like the salty sweet combo, sprinkle the cookies with flaky sea salt when they are fresh out of the oven.
Notes
Nutrition
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These look delicious. Making them today, however, I am confused about the Sugar content. I’m reading 1 gram. A half a cup of maple syrup is used. That is equal to 8 tablespoons There are 24 g of sugar in 2 tablespoons. Would that not equal about 96g divided by 9 servings which is about 10? Plus the very small amount of sugar in the butter and oats? Am I missing something? Does the recipe call for more servings? Thanks.
Hi Patty! Thanks so much for catching that! It’s 10 grams of sugar per cookie, so it was a typo on my end! Apologies for that! I went ahead and updated the nutrition information. I appreciate you bringing this to my attention! xoxo 🙂
@Julia, Good to know, thank you. I made these cookies and they were delicious. Great for a quick snack or breakfast!
Sounds very good. Trying to keep calories down I wonder if you can use peanut protein powder instead of the butter?
Hi there! It’s tough to say without having tried it myself, but I don’t think the cookies would work out because it’s the almond butter that glues everything together. It’s possible they would turn out great, but my guess is they won’t hold together. Let me know if you try it!