Gordon Ramsay’s oatmeal cookies are made with just five ingredients: rolled oats, peanut butter, honey, raisins, and walnuts. No flour, no eggs, no refined sugar. These are genuinely healthy cookies that happen to taste brilliant, ready in about 45 minutes including chilling time.
The recipe comes from his Ultimate Fit Food cookbook, where he files these under training snacks rather than desserts. He calls them “full of easy-access energy when you need it most” and keeps a batch in the fridge for the whole family to grab before a workout or on the school run.
The technique that makes these work as actual cookies rather than energy balls is pressing them flat before baking. Ramsay bakes them at 160°C for just 10–12 minutes, so you get a golden, crisp outside while the centre stays chewy from the oats and honey.
Gordon Ramsay’s Oatmeal Cookies
Course: Dessert, SnackCuisine: BritishDifficulty: Easy14
cookies25
minutes12
minutes150
kcal37
minutesFrom Gordon Ramsay’s Ultimate Fit Food. Five-ingredient healthy oatmeal cookies with no flour, no eggs, and no refined sugar. Pressed flat and baked until crisp outside, chewy inside, at just 150 kcal each.
Ingredients
100g peanut butter (smooth or crunchy)
3 tbsp runny honey
125g rolled oats
150g raisins
50g walnuts, very finely chopped
Directions
- Mix the base: Stir the peanut butter and honey together in a large bowl until combined.
- Add the dry ingredients: Pour in the rolled oats, raisins, and chopped walnuts. Mix well until everything is coated in the peanut butter honey mixture.
- Chill: Place the mixture in the fridge for 20 minutes to firm up.
- Shape the cookies: Preheat the oven to 160°C (320°F) fan/Gas 3. Line a baking tray with baking paper. Roll the mixture into balls about 3–4cm wide, squeezing firmly to make them stick. Place on the tray and press each one into a flat circle.
- Bake: Cook for 10–12 minutes until golden and crisp on the outside. The centres should still feel slightly soft because they firm up as they cool.
- Cool and store: Leave on the tray for 10 minutes, then transfer to an airtight container. Store in the fridge for up to 2 weeks.
FAQs
What makes these healthy cookies different from regular oatmeal cookies?
Most oatmeal cookie recipes start with 225g butter, brown sugar, flour, and eggs, then throw in some oats for texture. Ramsay strips all of that out. The peanut butter binds the dough, the honey sweetens it, and the oats do the rest.
Each cookie comes in at 150 kcal with 4g of protein and 2g of fibre. Those numbers come straight from the nutritional breakdown in Ultimate Fit Food.
No creaming butter, no sifting flour, no waiting for eggs to reach room temperature. Five ingredients in a bowl, 20 minutes in the fridge, 12 minutes in the oven. If you want something more traditional for decorating with kids, his sugar cookies from Make It Easy take the classic butter-and-flour route instead.
Why does Ramsay use rolled oats, not instant?
He’s specific about this across multiple cookbooks. In Ultimate Home Cooking, he explains that rolled oats “have been steamed and flattened into flakes” which gives them structure when baked.
Instant oats absorb too much moisture and collapse into mush. You’d end up with a flat, soggy disc instead of something with bite.
Rolled oats hold their shape through the oven, which is what gives you that chewy centre with crisp edges. If you can find jumbo rolled oats, even better. Ramsay uses those in several of his oat-based recipes for extra texture.
Are these the same as Ramsay’s muesli energy bites?
Same base recipe, different shape. In Ultimate Fit Food, Ramsay presents them as energy bites first: roll into balls, chill for an hour, eat straight from the fridge with no baking.
The cookie version is his variation: press the balls flat and bake at 160°C for 10–12 minutes. You get crisp edges and a chewy centre instead of a dense, fridge-cold ball.
If you want them softer, skip the oven entirely and eat them as bites. If you want crunch, bake them. Both versions keep for up to two weeks in the fridge. See how these compare to his traditional bakes in our best cookie recipes from his cookbooks.
Can you use crunchy peanut butter instead of smooth?
Ramsay says either works. Crunchy gives you extra texture from the peanut pieces on top of the walnuts and oats, so every bite has more going on.
Smooth makes the dough easier to press flat and gives a more even bake. I prefer crunchy because these cookies are meant to be textured, not polished.
One thing to watch: if your peanut butter is the natural kind with oil sitting on top, stir it well before measuring. Too much separated oil makes the dough greasy and the cookies spread too thin. If you want peanut butter in a more traditional cookie, his peanut butter and jam cookies from Ultimate Home Cooking use it with muscovado sugar, butter, and a thumbprint of raspberry jam.
