When I say soft baked I MEAN soft baked. These soft baked peanut butter protein cookies melt in your mouth with a sweet, creamy, chocolatey flavor. They taste like they just came out of the oven at your local bakery, but they’re very high in protein and actually healthy. They are sweet and crumbly, filled with cacao nibs and protein bar bits.

It’s hard to describe what the perfect cookie looks like. For me, it’s soft and doughy on the inside with a slightly crunchy top. I like when cookies have a fun surprise incorporated like walnuts, chocolate or dried fruit. This cookie ticks all of those boxes AND has a number of others:

• all healthy ingredients
• pre or post workout snack
• afternoon pick me up snack
• high in protein with peanut butter and protein bar pieces
• cacao nibs are high in antioxidants

Basic Ingredients

All you need for these soft baked peanut butter protein cookies is peanut butter, sugar or coconut sugar, an egg, baking soda, salt, cacao nibs and a few protein bars. Throw all of them in a bowl, then mix until combine. Bake them for 12 minutes, and you are done. Now you can enjoy your protein bars in a new way, with a hot cup of coffee in the morning.

The Protein Bar: IQ Bar

For this recipe, you can use any protein bar that you find the tastiest, which can sometimes be hard to find. Not, anymore. The IQ protein bars taste like a fudge bar, without the grainy and artificial flavor of protein. The texture is perfect and so is the sweetness. They just have so much going for them, to name a few:

• vegan, gluten-free, dairy free
• low in sugar
• high in protein
• not as dense as other bars, 150 calories each and don’t feel like a rock in your stomach…
• great texture: soft and chewy
• delicious flavors that don’t taste artificial! I like almond butter chip and chocolate sea salt the best.

Whether it’s to make these cookies or to try a new protein bar, these IQ bars will be a wonderful addition to your day. You will crave them;)

Print

Tweaking this soft baked protein cookies

These cookies can easily be made vegan by replacing the egg with a quarter cup of coconut milk or a flax egg. You can also make these almond butter or cashew butter, or even chunky peanut butter for extra crunch. If you want something more indulgent, use dark chocolate chips instead of cacao nibs and sugar instead of coconut sugar.

The Perfect Recipe: Yummly

I used to spend so much time searching for the perfect protein bar/protein cookie recipe. I wanted it to to tick all the boxes, and I saved recipe, after recipe. It got to the point where I had so many I just deleted them all. Oops. I recently found a great, organised way to save my recipes, and now I actually make all of them! Yummly is a recipe sharing website that allows you to search recipes with certain criteria and save them in an organised way. I am constantly going on my account to find saved recipes. It is fun and totally beats scrolling through months of bookmarks on my phone. You can sign up in just a few minutes and start cooking!

Some other healthy bites…

Try my baked donuts topped with granola, or my blueberry baked oatmeal cups. Both are healthy, full of nutrients and taste great with a cup of coffee in the morning.