These sweet potato bars made with oats are the perfect healthy snack. Add your favorite mix-ins like dried fruit, nuts or even chocolate chips.
Last fall I got hooked on meal prep. I hadn’t really embraced spending a chunk of the weekend prepping food for the week before, but once I started tracking macros more closely, it made sense to prepare components in advance.
Three months later, I’m still at it, and the main reason it works for me is that I rarely make full recipes ahead of time. Instead, I prep ingredients: roast a big tray of vegetables, cook a few starches like rice or roasted squash, and brown a pound or two of ground meat. I wash fruit, wash and chop lettuce, and prep snack veggies. That minimal approach has made daily meals effortless.
One thing I do make as a recipe each week is a baked good—these sweet potato oat bars are my current favorite. They’re great for afternoon snacks or to fuel a pre-dinner workout.
I love keeping a batch of baked bars on hand. They’re similar in spirit to the high-protein snack bars I’ve made before—cinnamon cake bars, pumpkin chocolate chip bars, gluten-free pumpkin bars, or a strawberry yogurt chocolate chip snack cake—but with a sweet potato base for a seasonal twist.
These bars are satisfying and surprisingly macro-friendly: about 4.5 g protein, just under 15 g carbs and 3.3 g fat per bar (plain), so they’re a solid choice if you’re tracking nutrients.
How Do You Make Sweet Potato Bars?
The easiest part: everything except the mix-ins goes into a food processor. Pulse until smooth, fold in any add-ins, then spread into a greased or parchment-lined 8×8 baking dish and bake. I often prepare the sweet potato while meal prepping—roast or bake several at once, cool, and stash the cooked flesh in the freezer so it’s ready whenever I bake.
These bars depend on two main ingredients: oat flour and cooked sweet potato. If you don’t have oat flour, make your own by processing rolled oats in a blender or food processor until they form a fine flour.
Leftover cooked sweet potato freezes well and can be used later in soups, stews, chili or other baked treats like sweet potato cookies or biscuits. I do the same with cooked carrots, lentils, and overripe bananas so I have baking ingredients ready at hand.
What Can I Add To My Sweet Potato Bars?
The add-ins are flexible. I used dried cranberries for a festive touch, but raisins, dried cherries, dried blueberries, chopped nuts, unsweetened coconut flakes, cacao nibs, or chocolate chips all work. Keep the amount of add-ins similar to the recipe so the texture stays consistent.
You can also swap the sweet potato for cooked carrots if you prefer: carrots lower the carb content slightly. A 100 g serving of sweet potato has about 20 g carbs, while the same amount of cooked carrots contains roughly 10 g carbs.
How Do I Store Sweet Potato Bars?
Store them at room temperature for the first day, then move to an airtight container in the fridge. They also freeze well for one to two months. In my house they rarely last more than a few days!
More Sweet Potato Snacks:
Try whole wheat sweet potato banana muffins, sweet potato chocolate chip cookies, or sweet potato raisin bread. You can also adapt other seasonal muffin recipes—swap pumpkin for sweet potato in pumpkin apple olive oil muffins or try sweet potato and fig muffins.
Sweet Potato Oat Bars
Ingredients
- 1 cup cooked sweet potato, about 200g
- 1 egg
- 3/4 cup unsweetened almond milk, or milk of choice
- 2 tablespoons maple syrup
- 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1 cup oat flour, *see note
- 1/4 cup coconut flour
- 2 scoops/1 serving whey protein powder, **see note
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 2 tablespoons flax seed
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
- 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
- optional add-ins: 1/4 cup dried cranberries or any dried chopped fruit, chopped nuts, coconut flakes, chocolate chips
Instructions
-
Preheat oven to 375°F and line an 8×8 baking dish with parchment paper.
-
Add all ingredients in the order listed (except any add-ins) to a food processor.
-
Process until smooth, scraping down the sides as needed.
-
Stir in add-ins by hand with a spatula until combined.
-
Pour the mixture into the baking dish, spread into the corners and smooth the top.
-
Bake for about 22–25 minutes, until the center is set.
-
Remove from the oven and lift the bake out using the parchment overhang. Cool completely on a rack.
-
Cut into 12 even bars.
Notes
**The photos were made with collagen whey or flavored whey, but any good-quality whey protein powder works. Use one serving of your preferred whey powder.
Macros per bar (plain, no add-ins): 4.5g Protein | 14.8g Carbohydrates | 3.3g Fat
Macros per bar (with 1/4 cup dried cranberries): 4.5g Protein | 17.4g Carbohydrates | 3.3g Fat
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.