Yesterday I ran what felt like a million errands. From Target to Anthropologie to West Elm, I was Christmas shopping and sneaking things into my cart for our home too. Over the weekend we purchased new furniture for our living room area outside our kitchen and I’m THRILLED to start decorating again after a crazy few months of travel and work.
Finally the Ambitious Home is coming together. With jars full of freshly baked cookies on my countertops, obviously.
There’s something I absolutely love about chewy oatmeal cookies. They’re hearty and damn tasty, especially when you add a little brown butter to the mix. The toasted caramel-like flavor takes these classic oatmeal cookies to the next level. I find them absolutely perfect when paired with a hot cup of coffee.
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Ingredients in these brown butter oatmeal cookies
As I mentioned, these chewy, classic oatmeal cookies get a boost of flavor from warm brown butter and a few other key ingredients. Here’s everything you’ll need to make them:
- Butter: for browning, of course! And to give the dough moisture.
- Sugar: we’re using both brown sugar and white granulated sugar for sweetness. Learn how to make your own brown sugar here!
- Eggs: you’ll need 2 eggs in this oatmeal cookie recipe.
- Flour: these cookies have the perfect texture thanks to whole wheat pastry flour. All purpose flour will also work!
- Oats: for that chewy oatmeal goodness. Be sure to use old fashioned rolled oats, plus see below for a note on oats.
- Spices: don’t forget the ground cinnamon & nutmeg for the essential cozy flavor.
- Baking staples: you’ll also need vanilla extract, baking soda, and salt.
- For the icing: this light vanilla icing is made with powdered sugar, vanilla, and a little milk for thinning.
Simple ingredient swaps
Because these are traditional oatmeal cookies, I recommend sticking to the recipe as best as you can. In terms of swaps, here’s what I can recommend:
- A note on oats: You can use quick oats in this recipe if you want a thinner cookie. If you prefer the slightly thicker ones, regular oats are the way to go.
- Flour power: Feel free to sub all purpose flour for whole wheat pastry flour. I used whole wheat pastry because I love the flavor it gives the cookies. I haven’t tested these with any other flour though. If you want to make them gluten free, I suggest trying out an all purpose GF flour.
- To make vegan: I haven’t tested these cookies using flax eggs, but let me know in the comments if you do!
How to brown butter
Check out all of my tips, tricks and my step by step tutorial for browning butter and adding it to baking recipes!
More ways to jazz up these oatmeal cookies
These chewy and soft oatmeal cookies make the perfect base for fun mix-ins, too! Feel free to skip the icing and fold in:
- White or dark chocolate chips or chunks
- Dried cranberries or dried cherries
- Raisins
- Or anything else your heart desires!
How to get perfect oatmeal cookies every time
- Do not use substitutes. Please be sure to follow the recipe as written unless substitutes are noted. Changing the flour will likely affect the taste and texture of these cookies.
- Use room temp ingredients. After you brown your butter you’ll want to make sure that it is cool so that it doesn’t coagulate with the other ingredients. The same goes for your eggs — simply run the eggs under warm water for about a minute (or place them in a bowl of warm water for a few minutes) before adding them to your dough.
- Use fresh baking soda. Make sure your baking soda is fresh to ensure that these oatmeal cookies bake up properly.
- Measure your flour correctly. Do you know the best way to measure flour without a scale? Get my tips & tricks in this video!
Storing & freezing tips
- To store: store these brown butter oatmeal cookies in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 5 days.
- To freeze: you can actually freeze the oatmeal cookie dough OR the freshly baked cookies to enjoy later! Get all of my tips and tricks for freezing cookies here.
More cookie recipes you’ll love
- Paleo Ginger Molasses Cookies
- Salted Caramel Stuffed Chocolate Snickerdoodles
- Soft Cut Out Sugar Cookies (gluten free, grain free, paleo friendly)
- The Best Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies You’ll Ever Eat
- Soft Brown Butter Ginger Cookies with Lovely Lemon Icing
Get all of my cookie recipes here!
If you make these classic oatmeal cookies, be sure to leave a comment below, or upload a photo and tag #ambitiouskitchen on Instagram. Enjoy, xo!
Old Fashioned Iced Brown Butter Oatmeal Cookies
Ingredients
- Wet ingredients:
- 1 cup unsalted butter
- 1 cup brown sugar
- 1/2 cup granulated sugar
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 2 eggs, at room temperature
- Dry ingredients:
- 2 cups whole wheat pastry flour (all purpose flour will also work)
- 2 cups old fashioned rolled oats (can also use quick oats for flatter cookies)
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- For the icing:
- 1 cup powdered sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 2 tablespoons milk
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside.
- Melt butter in a medium skillet or pan over medium heat. After a few minutes, the butter will begin to crackle and then foam. Make sure you whisk consistently during this process. After a couple of minutes, the butter will begin to brown on the bottom of the saucepan. Continue to whisk and remove from heat as soon as the butter begins to brown and give off a nutty almost hazelnut-like aroma. Immediately transfer the butter to a bowl to prevent burning but make sure you scrape all the yummy brown bits from the pan; this is where the flavor is! Set brown butter aside to cool for 5 minutes.
- With an electric mixer, mix the brown butter and sugars until well combined, about 1 minute.
- Beat in the egg and vanilla until smooth and creamy, about 1 minute.
- Add the dry ingredients: flour, oats, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt; beat on low speed until just combined.
- Use a medium cookie scoop or your hands to grab about 1 large teasing tablespoon of dough. Drop on prepared cookie sheet, leaving at least 2 inches of space between each cookie.
- Bake for 10-13 minutes or until golden brown on the edges. Allow cookies to cool on the cookie sheet for a few minutes before transferring to a wire rack to finish cooling.
- When cookies are baking, you can make the icing: Add powdered sugar, vanilla extract and milk to a medium bowl and mix until smooth and no visible lumps.
- Once cookies have cooled a bit, spoon two teaspoonfuls of icing onto each cookie and spread out a little, then return to wire rack to let the icing harden. Makes about 2 dozen cookies (24).
Recipe Notes
Nutrition
Recipe by: Monique Volz | Photography by: Sarah Fennel
43 comments
Beautiful! This week is just going to be amazing, Monique! I think I’m going to try them gluten-free, we will see how they turn out!
these sound delicious and super cozy with the oats and brown sugar and spices! and even better that the icing hardens, because otherwise i can imagine what kind of a nightmare storing these would be without stacking them.
These cookies look so delicious and cozy, Monique! 🙂
Mmm, those look amazing! I love anything with brown butter, and I bet that with the hearty oats these cookies are almost like scones. So that makes them acceptable to eat for breakfast, right?!
These cookies look amazing. One question dark or light brown sugar?
I notice in the video you have nutmeg in the recipe but it does not appear in the print version. They look delish!!!!
Hmm. That’s weird. The video said nutmeg, the recipe had cloves. I looked at the video and there were no cloves in it. Maybe a simple mistake.
Love anything with brown butter! These cookies look divine
I NEED these cookies!
These look beautiful and I’m sure they taste as good as they look! 🙂
Just made these today. Amazing!! Great spice and the brown butter is awesome.
These look really good! I made a few interesting snacks before that I found at http://bit.ly/FreePaleoPack but other than that I’m new to gluten free cooking.
These seem really easy to make, even in a hurry. (which is important for a newbie) Thanks!
For the spices is it nutmeg or cloves or both? The video shows nutmeg, the recipe shows only cloves. Thanks can’t wait to make these!
How much cloves? It’s not in the ingredients list.
Sorry about that! It’s just supposed to be nutmeg. I fixed it 🙂
I actually made these with the 1/4 tsp cloves and not the nutmeg. They turned out really great with that little bit of spice. I made a double batch and took them to the volunteers at my church. I make the cookies small so that was about 120 cookies and they were gone by the end of the morning. Everyone loved them.
monique. i’ve made legit 6 batches of these cookies & have included them on my cookie plates that i distribute to friends & family every year. not only do i think they’re AMAZING (like omg, perfect chewy texture & the brown butter adds such complexity!), but everyone i’ve given them to has RAVED about them. like, “best cookie i’ve ever eaten” raving. this recipe is serious business. LOVE.
these look good – but, I don’t think they are healthy at all with amount of calories and sugar per cookie. I know you don’t claim to be, but still.
Hi! You’re right that these cookies aren’t necessarily “healthy,” but I’m a firm believer in being able to enjoy everything in moderation – including indulgent treats like this one 🙂 The majority of my recipes have a healthy kick to them, but I do like to bake up some indulgent goodness every so often!
It’s a cookie not a carrot.
Would it be possible to make the dough the night before and keep in the fridge to bake the next day?
Yes, definitely!
Great thanks!
Do you have to use the cinnamon and nutmeg? I buy these cookies in the store and they don’t have either in them and I really like them but I wouldn’t want to make the cookies taste bad. Thank you
You could leave them out if you wanted, but they help give the cookies their distinct flavor!
I made these the other night and they are DELICIOUS! My only question is, my cookies didn’t turn out quite as thick as yours – any tips for that? Thanks!!
So glad you liked them! I’d recommend rolling the cookie dough balls a bit “taller” if that makes sense, and/or chilling the dough a bit beforehand.
I just made these and they are delicious. The texture is absolutely perfect and the brown butter makes them special. I used 1/2 old fashioned oats and 1/2 quick oats mostly because I couldn’t decide, lol. The only adjustment I made was to double the salt since you call for unsalted butter and 1/4 tsp didn’t seem quite enough – this is mostly personal preference, as I always think cookies are better with plenty of salt.
The brown butter is the star here! Glad you loved these too 🙂
Are these cookies freezer friendly?
Yes! Feel free to freeze the dough, or the cookies themselves. I would just wait to frost them until they’re thawed & baked 🙂
The caramel like flavor make these oatmeal cookies a favorite.
Really really delish cookie!! This one will be the star of my cookie exchange this year.
I’d made another cookie once which used browned butter. One important thing I learned was that the butter browns quicker if a shallow pan is used.
I used a heavy gauge stainless steel, clad bottom pot and browned the butter one stick at a time.
And yes for sure much of the cookies flavor comes from the browning. so don’t be afraid to actually let the butter get to that stag. but, do be careful. and for sure have that bowl ready to pour off the butter quickly!!
I used fresh ground nutmeg and added pecans. Yummm!
Great tips! So glad you loved these and great idea with fresh nutmeg + pecans 🙂
I liked them, they came together nicely. I was hoping for a bit more brown butter flavor. But I will make again
I absolutely adore this recipe!! Fantastic use of brown butter to complement the oats.
FYI – found your ebook cookie recipes to be a 10/10
Thank you for your recipes!
I’m so glad!!
Was hesitant to make a recipe with no reviews but these were delicious! Tasted a little more spice than oatmeal but I prefer that anyways. The batter was an amazing texture with a caramel-like flavor. Will make again for sure!
And now I’m seeing the reviews lol
Love it! So glad you enjoyed 🙂
Simple and delicious recipe! Will definitely make again!!
Thank you–so glad you enjoyed them!
Simple and delicious. My half batch made about 15 cookies. Came out perfectly with recipe as written. Definitely will make again!