bakingwithtradition.com is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a way for websites to earn advertising revenues by advertising and linking to recommended products. Some of the links below are affiliate links. This means that, at zero cost to you, I will earn an affiliate commission if you click through the link and finalize a purchase.

The best loaded crispy oatmeal cookies have butter crisp edges, chewy middles and full of chocolate chunks and your favorite mix-in ingredients. Warm, room temperature, or cold, these cookies are a symphony of layers of flavors and texture. This is a classic oatmeal cookie with a couple modern tweaks that make them awesome.

I for one have never loved the classic Toll House chocolate chip cookie. To me, they’re too sweet, and the cookie batter itself has too little variation in texture. Give me oatmeal any day for how the chewy oats stand up to whatever you want to stir into the cookie dough.

Oatmeal cookies also have the advantage of being rather sturdy. These are awesome cookies for taking to your kids’ sports teams, packaging up for bake sales, or putting out on a platter for a potluck. Kept in an airtight container or cookie jar, they easily keep for a week.

I’ve been making this version of this cookie with white chocolate chunks and dried cranberries for years now. If these cookies don’t show up to my family’s Game Night we host monthly at church, I hear about it. Beyond white chocolate and cranberries, I’ll give you some ideas for fun flavor combinations that’ll make the oatmeal sing.

crispy oatmeal cookies, white chocolate and cranberries on cloth

The Best Loaded Crispy Oatmeal Cookies

Crispy Oatmeal Cookies ingredients

Butter: at room temperature
Sugar: white sugar and brown sugar
Flour: all-purpose
salt
baking powder
vanilla: I like vanilla paste here, but vanilla extract is a good choice too.
cinnamon or pumpkin pie spice (optional but awesome)
Mix-ins: white chocolate chunks and dried cranberries; dark chocolate chips with walnuts; Whoppers, espresso powder, and marshmallow; coconut and apricots etc.

Secrets to the best loaded crispy oatmeal cookies

Use room temperature butter: The butter and sugars need to be creamed together for kind of a long time. If the butter is too cold, the sugar won’t get blended into the butter well. Set out your butter the night before you bake.
Long creaming time: Don’t skimp on this step. Over about 10 minutes, the sugar will aerate and dissolve in the butter, giving these cookies their signature texture. I learned this technique in Christina Tosi’s Momofuku Milk Bar book. At first I thought it sounded far-fetched, but she’s 100% right. Long creaming time makes for awesome cookies.
Use room temperature eggs: I’m notorious for forgetting about setting out eggs. No worries: simply take your eggs, place them in a small bowl and cover them with warm water for about 10 minutes.
Mix your mix-ins into the dry ingredients: I know everyone tells you that you should put your chocolate chips or raisins or whatever mix-ins you’re using into the dough AFTER you beat in the dry ingredients. They’re wrong. Here’s why: Inevitably, if you mix your mix-ins in after the dry ingredients, there will be cookies that have too high of a proportion of mix-ins to cookie dough matrix. Additionally, there will be cookies down at the bottom of the bowl that get one lone sad chocolate chip. If you mix your mix-ins into the dry ingredients, they will be evenly distributed in the dough. Try it once this way, and you’ll never try it another way again.
Let your cookies finish baking on the hot sheet pans: Bake the cookies the listed time, then let them cool completely to the touch before you transfer them to a wire rack to finish cooling internally. You’ll get the best texture doing this.
Cinnamon: just add it. This little bit of spice brings out more complex flavors in the all the rest of them. Every time I don’t add it, the cookies taste just a little bit flatter. I love it with the white chocolate and cranberry, but it also is fantastic with dark chocolate. Cinnamon and coffee are two ingredients that make chocolate taste more chocolatey.
Oats: use old-fashioned oats aka rolled oats here. Quick oats are too fine and will give you a different texture. It’s not bad, but the larger oats are better. Oat flour is also too fine for this recipe.

More mix-in ideas

Dark chocolate walnut: 1 cup 70% chocolate chips and 1 cup chopped walnuts.
Coconut Apricot: 1 cup sweetened coconut and 1 cup dried apricots, chopped into pea sized bits.
Date pecan: 1 cup chopped dates and 1 cup chopped candied praline pecans.
Classic oatmeal raisin: 1 cup of raisins, 1 cup of chopped almonds

Loaded oatmeal cookies step by step

Creaming butter and sugar

Preheat your oven to 350F (180 C). Line 2 half-size sheet baking pans with parchment paper.

First, cream your butter with the brown and white sugar in the bowl of a standing mixer with the paddle attachment or with a hand mixer until well mixed and fluffy. Use a baking spatula to scrape down the sides of the bowl regularly. This step will take a good 6-7 minutes in a warm kitchen and 10 minutes in a cold kitchen.

Prep dry ingredients

While the butter is beating, mix the dry ingredients: in a large bowl, mix the flour, old-fashioned oats, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt with a whisk. Add in the chopped white chocolate and cranberries, then toss them well to distribute them in the dry mix.

oatmeal, flour, white chocolate and cranberries in bowl

Finish making oatmeal cookie dough

Place eggs and vanilla in a small dish. Add the eggs one at a time to the butter, mixing until incorporated well. Scrape down the sides, then add the vanilla and beat for a couple seconds. The eggs will lighten the mixture quite a bit.

creamed butter and sugar and eggs on spatula

Turn the mixer off, then pour the dry ingredient mix into the bowl. Use your baking spatula to turn the dry ingredients over a couple times, then use the mixer to finish mixing everything. It should take about 10-15 seconds on low speed to incorporate the dry ingredients. Stop when you do not see flour.

Bake cookies

baking scoop, oatmeal cookie dough and bowl on baking sheet

Use a tablespoon to drop golf-ball sized dough balls of dough onto your prepared sheets. Place 8 cookies to a sheet, leaving plenty of room between cookies. You can use a cookie scoop here like a Vollrath purple 3/4 oz scoop, but it’s not necessary. For these cookies, I used 2 scoops (1 1/2oz).

Bake two prepared sheet pans of cookies for 15-16 minutes, rotating the sheet pans top to bottom and back to front halfway through baking for the most even baking. They should be golden brown and just set in the middle. If they seem too soft when you check on them, pop them back in the oven for an extra minute.

Allow the cookies to cool about 5 minutes on the sheet pans before moving them to a rack to completely cool.

Bake extra dough on cooled sheet trays. If they’re too hot, you can place them in a cool table outside, or stand them vertically against a cabinet for a couple minutes.

Full recipe for loaded crispy oatmeal cookies

The Best Loaded Oatmeal Cookies

5 Stars 4 Stars 3 Stars 2 Stars 1 Star

No reviews

Total Time: 1 hours
Yield: 24 cookies

Print Recipe

Description

This is the perfect oatmeal cookie with your favorite mix-ins. Our family favorite is white chocolate cranberry, but almost anything goes in here, so check the notes for ideas.

Ingredients

Scale

2 sticks butter (227 grams), at room temperature
3/4 cup granulated sugar (150 grams)
3/4 cup packed brown sugar (160 grams)
2 large eggs, at room temperature
1 tsp vanilla extract or vanilla paste
2 cups old fashioned rolled oats (190 grams)
2 cups all-purpose flour (260 grams)
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp cinnamon or pumpkin pie spice
1/2 tsp salt
4 oz bar of white chocolate, chopped roughly into chocolate chip size pieces
1 cup dried cranberries, cut in half with kitchen scissors if they seem big

Cook Mode Prevent your screen from going dark

Instructions

Line 2 baking sheets with parchment. Preheat the oven to 350 F (180C).
Cream the butter with the sugars on low speed (Kitchen Aid 1 or with a hand mixer) until very well blended and fluffy. Scrape down the sides of the mixer several times. This should take 10 minutes in a cold kitchen and about 6-7 in a warm kitchen.
While the butter is beating, mix the dry ingredients: in a large bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt with a whisk. Add in the chopped white chocolate and cranberries, then toss them well to distribute them in the dry mix.
When the butter mixture is fluffy, add in the eggs, one at a time. Add in the vanilla and beat for a few more seconds.
Scrape the bowl and beater well, paying attention to the bottom of the bowl which always likes to hide a little pocket of unmixed butter.
After you've finished scraping, pour in the dry ingredients (the mixer should be off!). Lower the mixer paddle into the whole mix, then carefully turn the mixer on then off rapidly. If you make this on/off motion in one little microsecond burst at a time, the flour won't go everywhere. After a few power pulses, the mixer should be able to mix everything without flinging flour. Mix just until you see no flour–about 10 seconds.
Use a tablespoon to drop golf-ball sized balls of dough onto your prepared sheets. Place 8 cookies to a sheet, leaving plenty of room between cookies.
Bake two prepared sheet pans of cookies for 15-16 minutes, rotating the sheets 180 degrees and swapping them from top to bottom halfway through baking for the most even baking.
Allow the cookies to cool about 5 minutes on the sheet pans before moving them to a rack to completely cool.
Bake extra dough on cooled sheet trays. If they're too hot, you can place them in a cool table outside, or stand them vertically against a cabinet for a couple minutes.

Notes

Mix-in variations: Add in one of these variations in place of the white chocolate and cranberries

Dark chocolate walnut: 1 cup 70% chocolate chips and 1 cup chopped walnuts.
Mocha Malt Marshmallow: 1 cup chopped Whoppers candy, with 1 tsp instant espresso powder added into the dry ingredients. Place a few marshmallows on each cookie in the last 2 minutes of baking.
Coconut Apricot: 1 cup sweetened coconut and 1 cup dried apricots, chopped into pea sized bits.
Date pecan: 1 cup chopped dates and 1 cup chopped candied pecans.
Raisin almond: 1 cup of raisins, 1 cup chopped salted almonds
Make your own!: shoot for 1 cup of something melty or crunchy and 1 cup of something fruity.

Prep Time: 30 minutes
Additional Time: 0 hours
Cook Time: 30 minutes