These soft and chewy Iced Oatmeal Cookies are filled with brown butter, cozy spices, and lots of oats for the most amazing texture. They bake up into perfect craggy cookies, which are then dipped into a quick icing glaze for a picture perfect iced oatmeal cookie!
Hi hi! I am just popping in to share this super delicious chewy Iced oatmeal cookie with you!
I am really excited to share this one with you because it has put me through my paces. Every now and then a recipe totally throws me for a loop and it's always when I'm least expecting it. I tested this Iced Oatmeal Cookie recipe more than 20 times to get it just right for you. Turns out getting a cookie the right texture to hold icing nicely is way harder than it looks, but we got there!
These are a fairly basic oatmeal cookie - we have the usual suspects, along with some brown butter and toasted oats for amazing chew. I added some cozy warm spices. The cookies come together quickly and bake up into beautiful craggly cookies which we then dip into a super simple icing for that classic iced oatmeal cookie look.
The sneaky step here is to pulse the oats to give the perfect texture for dipping - more on that further down the post!
Important Ingredients in Iced Oatmeal Cookies and why I used them
These Iced Oatmeal Cookies don't use anything too special, but it is the ratio of ingredients that make a difference!
- Butter. I browned the butter for these cookies - brown butter makes everything taste better in my opinion.
- Sugar. I use granulated and brown sugar - I went with more brown than white in these cookies to give them a toasty flavour and to stop them spreading as much (white sugar = spread, brown sugar = less spread)
- Oats. I use old fashioned (sometimes called wholegrain) oats, which get toasted and then blitzed in the food processor.
- Molasses. Just a little to help with flavour and spread of the cookie - molasses gives an amazing richness to cookies which pairs super well with the brown butter and spices. If you don't have any, you can use treacle or golden syrup (I haven't tested with these but it should be fine)
- Spices. I used cinnamon and cardamom here - if you wanted to also add in a little ginger or nutmeg that would be nice too.
- Leavener. I used both baking powder and soda - as we are using brown sugar and molasses in the recipe, which are both acidic, baking soda is a good choice as it reacts with them but also helps with spread.
Lots of notes on oats - we are going to toast them, and then whizz them up.
There are lots of notes on the oats in this recipe. The main thing is that in order to hold icing nicely, the cookie has to be nice and craggy on the top, and fairly uniform in thickness (this is where the cookie scoot comes in).
I did a ton of research and read almost every iced oatmeal cookie I could find on the internet and almost all of them did the same thing - pulsed the oats in a food process or or blender.
10 pulses is the sweet spot here. You want some to still be whole, and some to be ground up - see the image for reference.
I go one step further here and also toast my oats in the oven before using them. This makes for a mega chewy cookie - toasting the oats dries them out slightly, and I love the texture that it gives. If that is one step too far for you and you can't be bothered then that is fine - just skip that step and use regular old fashioned oats.
This recipe took me SO many tests.
As I said earlier, it is not that often that a recipe sends me down this deep of a rabbit hole, but this one absolutely did. I only was making small changes to the recipe in order to get the right texture for the cookies to hold icing, but here are the things that I was adjusting:
Milk Powder in the recipe
Often when I brown butter I add in milk powder to the butter (I do this in my oatmeal raisin cookies). What this does is basically make a double strength brown butter - when you brown butter you are toasting the milk solids so adding in more milk solids makes for a mega brown butter.
Sometimes this doesn't work as well though and I found it gave inconsistent results for the cookie texture, so I ditched the milk powder and just used regular brown butter.
Flour quantity.
The final tests I was alternating by 15 grams of flour across the entire batch and it made a big difference in how the final cookie turned out. Use a scale.
Ball size.
Turns out, the size of your balls does matter. Smaller balls of cookie dough will sink down less, giving a more humpy (I can't think of a better word sorry) cookie, whereas a larger ball of cookie dough will spread out slightly more. I played around with adjusting the dough balls anywhere between 35-60g and found that a larger dough ball of 55g works best. I use a #24 cookie scoop.
Ratio of brown to white sugar.
This is usually one of the first things I will change if I only want a small change in the spread of a recipe (if I want a larger difference or a big change in moisture and texture then I play with the butter quantity).
Brown sugar causes less spread in a cookie whereas white sugar causes more and causes the cookie to be chewier (melted butter helps with chew too). A slightly higher ratio of brown to white sugar was the sweet spot for this recipe.
Oven temperature.
Changing the oven temperature by as little as 15°c / 20°f has a big impact on the spread of the cookie. This is why using an oven thermometer is important to make sure that your oven is properly calibrated.
I found that the cookies spread slightly less when baked at 350°f / 180°c which made them the perfect texture for dipping in icing.
Can I make these larger / smaller than the recipe suggests?
This iced oatmeal cookie recipe makes 10 cookies. Feel free to scale the sizing if you like, but I tested a bunch of sizes and the 55g dough ball is the best size to me, so you do you here but I have warned you!
How to get the icing just perfect
There is a little bit of an art form to dipping these iced oatmeal cookies. You want to be more light handed than you think that you need to be - they really just need to be touched onto the surface of the icing. There are a few things that are important here:
The scoot.
I know that I often suggest that you can round the cookies off when they come out of the oven as an optional step.
Scooting the cookies really helps here. I used a 3 ¾" (95mm) cookie cutter, but anything slightly larger than the cookie will work. Use it to scoot the cookie into a round shape when it is hot from the oven. This brings the edges in and makes it a nice craggy cookie to dip in the icing.
Make sure that your icing is the right consistency.
This isn't the time or the place to eyeball your glaze ratios. I tried a few different ones, and turns out that it is quite important that the icing is the right consistency - too thin and it runs everywhere, and too thick and it won't stick to the cookies.
I know that the recipe makes a little more than you need but it is important to have enough to ensure that you have adequate depth for dipping. If you want, you can store leftover icing in an airtight container with plastic wrap on the surface of it - you could paint it over sugar cookies or something similar or use it as a drizzle or glaze.
Dip carefully.
When you dip the cookie into the icing, you want to make sure that you go straight up and down, and just lightly touch the cookie to the surface of the icing - you don't want to do a big dip. It might take one or two to get the hang of.
Once you have dipped, hold the cookie upside down over the bowl for a little bit to allow any excess to drip off, then carefully turn over and leave to set.
Leave the cookies to set completely before storing. Store in an airtight container at room temperature for up to a week.
Can Iced Oatmeal cookies be made ahead of time?
I haven't tested freezing and chilling dough sorry as I wanted to just get the recipe up for you - I will report back as soon as I have!
I will say that make sure that you make the cookies on the same day that you dip them - I left some to sit out overnight when I was testing them and they went a little soft which made dipping a bit difficult.
A note on Brown Butter
You will notice that there are two quantities of butter in the recipe - the initial quantity called for in the recipe (130g), and then a weighed out quantity in the method (100g). This is intentional and is not a typo.
When you brown butter, you are cooking off the water in the butter, and cooking the milk solids, which is what gives you the brown part of brown butter. Due to the loss of moisture, the overall volume of the butter when it goes from solid or melted butter to brown butter will decrease.
The recipe accounts for this which is why I have given you two quantities of butter. Butter varies internationally in how much fat / water it contains, so some butter will cook down to a lower yield than others depending on how much water you cook out, hence the need to re-weigh your butter once you have browned it.
Frequently Asked Questions
What tools and equipment do you use?
You can find a full list of the tools and equipment I use on my products page
Which cookie scoop did you use?
I used a #24 cookie scoop - my favourite kind is the ones called a 'disher' which have a little lever on the side.
❤️ Made this recipe and love it? ❤️
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Answers to your baking questions
Over the years, many of you have asked me questions about:
- baking in grams
- adjusting oven temperatures
- what kind of salt to use
- and many more!
I've curated and answered them all for your easy reference in this frequently asked questions post!
Chewy Iced Oatmeal Cookies with Brown Butter
- Author: Erin Clarkson
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Prep Time: 20 minutes -
Cook Time: 15 minutes
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Total Time: 45 minutes
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Yield: 10 cookies -
Category: cookies -
Method: baking -
Cuisine: american
Pin RecipeDescription
These soft and chewy Iced Oatmeal Cookies are filled with brown butter, cozy spices, and lots of oats for the most amazing texture. They bake up into perfect craggy cookies, which are then dipped into a quick icing glaze for a picture perfect iced oatmeal cookie!
Ingredients
Oatmeal Cookies
- 120g old fashioned oats (toasts down to 100g, see notes in the method)
- 130g unsalted butter, cold from the fridge is fine
- 95g brown sugar
- 65g granulated sugar
- 20g molasses
- 1 large egg (50g not including the shell), at room temperature
- 150g all-purpose flour
- 1 tsp (3g) kosher salt or ½ tsp table salt
- ½ tsp cinnamon
- ¼ tsp cardamom
- ¼ tsp baking soda
- ¼ tsp baking powder
Icing
- 190g powdered sugar, sifted if lumpy
- 35g whole milk
Instructions
OATMEAL COOKIES
- Preheat the oven to 350°f / 180°c. Line two sheet pans with parchment paper. Place the oats on another sheet pan. Bake, stirring occasionally, until the oats are lightly golden brown, 10-15 minutes. Remove from the oven and leave to cool - this should happen in the time you are browning the butter and mixing up the wet ingredients.
- Weigh out 100g of the toasted oats. Place the cooled oats in a small food processor or nutribullet and pulse 10 times - it should have some larger chunks and some smaller pieces - see image in the blog post.
- While the oats are toasting, brown the butter. Place the butter into a small saucepan and melt over medium heat. Cook the butter, whisking frequently, until the milk solids begin to brown. Continue to cook until the butter mixture is medium brown and nutty smelling. Remove the brown butter from the heat and weigh out 100g into a medium bowl (see notes below). Leave to stand for 10 minutes so that the warm butter does not scramble your eggs. If you would like to speed up this method, you can place the bowl into a larger bowl of cold water, stirring frequently until the brown butter has cooled slightly and is no longer hot to the touch.
- Add the brown sugar, granulated sugar, molasses, and egg to the bowl with the butter. Using a whisk or a handheld electric mixer, beat until slightly thicker and lighter in consistency and colour.
- Add the blended oats, flour, salt, cinnamon, cardamom, baking soda, and baking powder. Mix with a spatula to combine.
- Leave the batter to stand at room temperature for 5 minutes to allow it to hydrate slightly.
- Using a #24 cookie scoop, scoop 55g balls of cookie dough onto the prepared baking sheets. I like to bake my cookies one tray at a time but if you would like to do both at once, then go ahead.
- Space the cookies evenly on the sheet pans - I do 6 on one pan and 4 on the other.
- Bake the cookies for 12-13 minutes, until set around the edges and in the middle. You want to make sure they are properly baked - if they are too soft they may be hard to dip.
- Remove from the oven and lightly tap the sheet pan on a heatproof surface to deflate the cookies slightly. Using a round cookie cutter slightly larger than the cookie or something else round (the cutter I used was 3 ¾" / 95mm), gently scoot the cookies into a nice round shape.
- If you have not baked the second pan of cookies, go ahead and do so. Leave the cookies to cool on the pan for 10-15 minutes then transfer to a cooling rack and allow to cool completely before icing.
ICING
- In a medium bowl (ideally something slightly shallow), combine the powdered sugar and milk, stirring well to combine.
- Working with one cookie at a time, dip the top of the cookie in the icing - there is a bit of knack to this - you want to go straight up and down, and only lightly dip the cookie into the icing so that it sticks to the craggly bits. Place the dipped cookies onto a cooling rack or sheet pan, and allow to stand at room temperature for a few hours to allow the icing to fully set.
- Store cookies in an airtight container at room temperature for up to a week.
Notes
If you are not using toasted oats, you can skip the toasting step and just use 100g old fashioned oats.
You will notice that there are two quantities of butter in the recipe - the initial quantity of butter, then a second measurement in the method which is the quantity of brown butter. The larger initial quantity is to account for water loss when browning - read more about that in my FAQ.
If you are using the recipe scaling feature (2x or 3x) be aware that any quantities, measurements, pan sizes, and cooking times given in the method do not scale automatically - it's only the quantities in the Ingredient List that scale automatically.
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