Oatmeal Cookies

"Oatmeal Cookies," from Make It Like a Man!

This is a refined version of the classic oatmeal cookie. They’re deceptively light, but incredibly filling. They have a delicately crisp exterior and a very soft interior. Jam-packed with raisins.

Ingredients to make 21 large cookies:

3¾ oz. (2/3 cup) bread flour
1½ oz. (1/3 cup) pastry flour
1¾ oz. (1/3 cup) whole-wheat pastry flour
3/4 tsp coarse salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp cinnamon
10 oz. (1¼ cups, or 2½ sticks) cold butter, divided
3½ oz. (1/2 cup) light or dark brown sugar
1¾ oz. (1/4 cup) granulated sugar
3½ oz. (2 large) eggs
2 Tbs maple syrup
1 Tbs vanilla
9 oz. (2⅔ cups) old-fashioned oats
12 oz. (1½ cups, packed) raisins

How to do it:

  1. In a large mixing bowl, whisk the flours with the salt, baking soda, powder, and cinnamon. Set aside.
  2. Melt 2½ oz. of butter (5 Tbs) in the microwave, 30-45 seconds on 100% power. Meanwhile, cut the remaining butter into golf-ball-sized chunks and place them in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Pour the melted butter onto the butter in the mixer bowl and cream until the butter appears creamy and fluffy, 1½ minutes ramping up very slowly to speed 4 (of 10). Scrape down the bowl.
  3. Add the sugars and cream until light and fluffy, 2 minutes ramping quickly up to speed 6 and stopping once mid-way through to scrape down the bowl. Scrape down the bowl again when you’re done.
  4. Add the first egg and beat just until combined, about 20 seconds on speed 2. Add the second egg, the syrup, and the vanilla, and beat again, just until combined, 40 seconds on lowest speed followed by 20 seconds on speed 2. Scrape down the bowl.
  5. Stir in the flour mixture just until combined, 12 seconds on lowest speed.
  6. Stir in the oats just until combined, 7 seconds on lowest speed. Scrape down the bowl.
  7. Stir in the raisins just until distributed, 7 seconds on lowest speed.
  8. Use a ¼-cup capacity ice cream scoop to scoop the dough into a sealable container and place it in the fridge at least overnight, preferably three days.

Although you could chill the dough in a single mass and portion it out later, it takes a surprising amount of muscle to portion out refrigerator-cold dough.

"Oatmeal Cookies," from Make It Like a Man!
  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F.

Don’t trust your oven to preheat. Mine sets a 10-minute timer, and when the timer goes off, it claims that it’s preheated. An oven thermometer proves that it hasn’t yet. In reality, it takes a good 20 minutes. The cookies are in the oven for only a very short time, so the temperature needs to be right, from the get-go.

  1. Place cookies on Silpat-lined sheets and bake until browned and crisp at the edges, 19 minutes.

The cookies won’t spread much. Once baked, they’ll turn out to be 3-inches in diameter, 1¼ inches tall. You can bake a dozen on an 11½ x 17-inch Silpat, easily.

  1. Cool on a rack until the sheet is cool enough to be handled with bare hands, then remove the cookies from the Silpat and allow them to cool fully on racks. ore at room temperature, covered loosely with waxed paper. For long-term storage, you’ll want a tightly sealed container at room temperature, but you will lose the crunchiness.

The backstory

The Make It Like a Man! crew is particular about oatmeal cookies. They can’t be too cakey, and they have to be loaded with oats and raisins. We like the classic flavor profile, so – although we might enjoy off-the-beaten-path additions now and again – it’s important for us to have a classic, go-to version … and we don’t. So we set out to develop one.

We’re no experts, so for us “developing one” means seeing what others have done, doing some research, and Frankensteining all of that into our own recipe. You might be thinking, “That’s what experts do, too.” But I imagine they have more core knowledge and understanding about all of this. We sort of stumbled around half-blindly as we consulted these recipes: BA, Food Network, Williams-Sonoma, Martha, and as a wildcard, Sports Glutton. We reduced each one to a common flour amount, and then compared ratios of other ingredients to flour. To sort out the meaning of the resultant data, we consulted Sugar Kissed, Fine Cooking, and Baking Science to come up with these guidelines:

  • More fat = a chewier cookie
  • White sugar = crisper
  • More sugar = more spread
  • More eggs = spread less
  • More yolk = chewier
  • Baking soda, even though there’s nothing in this recipe for it to react with in the usual way, nonetheless enhances browning
  • Baking powder = cakey
  • Salt = flavor depth and chewy

If you do decide on off-the-beaten path additions, consider swapping out chopped chocolate for the raisins. It has to be chocolate from a bar, or from baking discs. Chocolate chips will produce a texture that’s different from the one we’re suggesting. Chocolate chips have additives that help them hold their shape in the oven. If you use pure chocolate, you’ll get something that melds more interestingly into the cookie. Chopped peanuts might also make an interesting addition.

In the Future

These aren’t the best oatmeal cookies we’ve ever had. They’re good, even really good, but not the best. As we continue to bake these oatmeal cookies, we’re going to experiment with melting more of the butter, to see how that affects density. We’d love to know, though, if you have a traditional-style, oatmeal cookie recipe that is absolutely stellar, because we’d love to have it, too!

"Oatmeal Cookies," from Make It Like a Man!
Oatmeal Cookies

Credit for images on this page: Make It Like a Man! Thank you, Kesor. This content was not solicited by anyone, nor was it written in exchange for anything.  It’s going to be a weird, socially-distant Christmas. Homemade cookies would be a nice surprise to leave on your neighbor’s doorstep, even in you can’t pop in to wish them Merry Starbucks Holiday Cups Season, or “Happy Last-Minute Shopping at Walmart, Where We’ve Extended Our Black Friday Deals” Day, because that’s one part of what the season’s truly about. The second part’s about shaming and demonizing anyone whose failure to agree with you seems to threaten your very way of life. These cookies can’t help you with that, but a picture of them on Twitter, with a accusatory meme, can.  

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49 thoughts on “Oatmeal Cookies

  1. I’ve always love oatmeal raisin cookies — maybe because I feel I can totally get away with having them for breakfast. And they’re delicious with coffee. I bet this recipe is better than “really good!” 🙂 ~Valentina

    • Yes, I’m sure that difference would produce very different results! So many delicious varieties of oatmeal cookies!

  2. Jeff, if there is one cookie I can’t resist, it’s a chewy oatmeal raisin cookie. So, thanks for all of your research and recipe development.
    This isn’t your traditional oatmeal cookie, but here’s a Swedish version (but I like yours better and I haven’t even tasted it).

    Crispy cakes with roasted oats, cardamom and raisins
    When the oatmeal is roasted, they get a nutty taste which together with cardamom and raisins gives an exciting character to these good cakes.

    1.5 dl Oatmeal
    150 g room temperature butter
    1.5 dl caster sugar
    2 teaspoons vanilla sugar
    1.5 dl wheat flour
    2 teaspoons cardamom
    1 dl raisins
    1 teaspoon of bicarbonate
    1 pinch of salt

    How to cook the recipe (1 hour):
    Set the oven to 175C degrees.
    Spread the oatmeal on a baking sheet. Roast the oatmeal in the middle of the oven until they have a nice color, about 5-10 min. Carefully watch the oatmeal so that it does not burn! Let cool.
    Stir together butter, sugar and vanilla sugar in a bowl.
    Add wheat flour, oatmeal, cardamom, raisins, bicarbonate and salt and work quickly together into a dough.
    Form the dough into two logs and then divide each log into about 12 pieces. Roll each piece into a ball and place sparsely on plates covered with parchment paper Flatten them slightly and then bake in the middle of the oven, about 12 min.
    Ron recently posted…Mussel soup with smoked fresh cheese and sautéed fennel…

    • Thanks, Ron! I’ll put on my math hat (deciliters, how positively continental of you) and try these! 🙂

  3. I am quite particularly about oatmeal cookies, too, Jeff. We have that in common. These cookies will be made…and quite soon I suspect. I’m intrigued by the trio of flours there. I might need some chopped pecans in there, too, though. We’ll see about my mood the day I make them!
    David @ Spiced recently posted…Salted Caramel OREO Cookie Balls

    • I’m sure that pecan would be welcome in this cookie! If you do make it, I’d love to hear from you about it. It’s a really good cookie, but I think it could stand a bit of improvement and become a great cookie.

  4. Wow!! What an incredible cookie, they look fantastic! Love how big they are too! Nicely done. Developing a recipe is no easy task, particularly a cookie recipe, kudos to you for persevering.
    Hope you are well, we’re in a second lockdown and although we have updated our outdoor space to a warm and cozy space, it’s sitting under 6 inches of snow.
    Eva Taylor recently posted…Thai Basil Eggplant

    • Thanks, Eva! We’re under a lockdown “advisory” here in Chicago. I think that’s they’re way of easing us into what I’m sure will be a lockdown order. My guess is that an out-and-out order, during Thanksgiving and Christmas, is probably the right thing to do from a public health standpoint, but would spawn such chaos and would be so ignored that it would be difficult for the government to hold onto legitimate authority afterward. Such is the state of the U.S.! But at least I’ve got cookies, and there’s no snow on the ground!

    • Thanks, John! There was a lot of error on this path, but fortunately all the errors were edible!

  5. A classic cookie recipe that never gets old! I bought a giant bag of rolled oats at costco last week so these are looking pretty good!

  6. There is nothing like a good oatmeal cookie to take me back to simpler times… The recipe is amazing, Jeff, but I think my favorite part of this post is that you made a verb out of Frankenstein!

  7. These sound really delicious, Jeff. And with all fiber from the oatmeal, you could argue they’re good for you, too… (OK, I won’t push that argument too far.) Anyway, I could probably count on one hand the number of times I’ve baked cookies, but this might be the year I get started. And thanks for the tips, I’m on the same team when it comes to cakey cookies.
    Frank recently posted…Frittata di salsiccia, patate e funghi (Sausage, Potato and Mushroom Frittata)

    • Thanks, Katerina! It is a good cookie, but I’m still on the lookout for a great one.

  8. love cookies…oatmeal is healthy…yummy.
    Have a great weekend.

    # Thank you for recipe.

  9. Awesome oatmeal cookies for this time of year Jeff. And I like how you’ve added raisins into them too. I once had somebody put a comment on one of my recipes that contained raisins asking what raisins were. I thought every body knew, but clearly not!
    Neil recently posted…Festive Nut Roast

    • Wow, I thought raisins were pretty universal. But it is funny, as I’ve been making friends with bloggers around the world, I find that so many of the food that I think are completely normal are unknown to people in other parts of the world.

  10. My favorite oatmeal cookies, I am getting hungry while seeing this cookies. Thank you for sharing.

  11. I love a nice oatmeal raisin cookie, I l love how you can taste the butter and the brown sugar in them. It’s been too long since I’ve had one as my kids won’t even touch raisins! I think I have to make a small batch just for me!! I know they weren’t your favorite cookie, but they sure look nice on the plate 🙂
    Marcelle recently posted…Lemon-Ricotta Cookies #ChristmasSweetsWeek

  12. Well your just hitting all this bases this time Jeff. I love chocolate chip and my husband love oatmeal raisin. He’d love these!! Recently we found a recipe that combines both cookies and we both loved the cookie. Maybe that’s one I should share. Thanks!!!

    • Well, that’d be cool. Let me know what happens! I’m convinced that these cookies could be better, and I’d love to hear about it if you stumble onto something that moves down that path!

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