Old Fashioned Iced Oatmeal Cookies Recipe (2024)

Old-fashioned Iced Oatmeal Cookies are crispy outside and soft and chewy inside with rich buttery brown sugar spiced flavor and crackly iced tops.

If you remember your mom or grandmother making these or if you pick up a box of Iced Oatmeal Cookies at the grocery store every so often, give these a try!

These cookies are everything you love about the classic favorite. They’re crisp on the outside, and soft and chewy in the center.

But they come with the added bonus of delicious homemade cookie flavor. Rich and buttery with brown sugar notes and a touch of spice – yum!

And let’s not forget the icing on the top because those craggy crackled tops are iconic.

These cookies are easy to make and perfect for any time of year. Pair them with an iced tea in the summer, latte in the fall, or add them to a cookie platter for the holidays!

Why You’ll Love This Recipe

• Perfect texture: they’re crispy along the outside and chewy in the middle. You won’t find dry, crumbly oatmeal cookies here!
• Delicious buttery brown sugar flavor with a touch of spice. These cookies are just sweet enough without being overly sweet, and they have a well-balanced spice level.
• Easy to make! Iced Oatmeal Cookies are a type of drop cookie, which means that you make the dough, and then drop it onto a cookie sheet to bake.

The Best Iced Oatmeal Cookies

Ingredients

Cookies:

• Old-fashioned rolled oats
• Unsalted butter
• Light brown sugar
• Egg
• Vanilla
• All-purpose flour
• Ground cinnamon
• Salt
• Baking soda
• Baking powder
• Ground nutmeg

Icing:

• Powdered sugar
• Milk
• Vanilla

Step by Step Instructions

1. Pulse the oats 10 times in a food processor. Don’t over-pulse, we don’t want them too powdery or the cookies won’t have the right texture.
2. Add the butter, brown sugar, egg, and vanilla to a large bowl and whisk to combine.
3. Add the pulsed oats and other dry ingredients to the butter mixture. Stir to combine.
4. The dough will be wet at this point. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap, and chill for 15 minutes in the freezer.
5. Use a 1-tablespoon scoop to measure out the dough and scoop it onto the silpat or parchment paper-lined baking trays, leaving a couple inches between each dough ball.
6. Bake the cookies at 350F until they’re golden and set along the outside, but still look a touch doughy in the center, about 10 to 12 minutes, rotating the trays once halfway through. Let the cookies cool for 10 minutes on the trays, and then transfer them to a wire rack to finish cooling.
7. Stir together all ingredients for the icing in a bowl, adding more milk if needed to reach the right consistency.
8. Lightly dip each cooled cookie into the icing. I like to just barely dip the cookie tops, so that they get a crackled look. Place the glazed cookies onto a wire rack and let the icing set before serving.

How to Store These Cookies

Store these cookies in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 1 week.

Or you can layer the cookies between pieces of parchment paper in an airtight container and freeze them for up to 3 months.

Tips for Making Iced Oatmeal Cookies

• Melt the butter and let it cool slightly. There is no need to remember to pull out the butter an hour early to let it come to room temperature. Simply melt the butter, and let it cool a little before making this cookie dough.
• Don’t skip chilling the dough. Iced Oatmeal Cookie dough is very wet and sticky, which is normal. But we need to chill it so the cookies don’t spread too much while baking. Just a 15 minute stint in the freezer (or 2 hours in the fridge) is all this dough needs.
• Just slightly dip the cookie tops in icing. This is so you get the gorgeous craggy iced cookie tops!

Iced Oatmeal Cookies FAQs

Can I Use Quick Oats Instead of Regular Oats to Make These Iced Oatmeal Cookies?

I recommend using old-fashioned rolled oats that are pulsed briefly in a food processor for this recipe.

Additionally, I tested these Iced Oatmeal Cookies with instant oats, and they had more of a cakey rather than chewy texture.

How do You Make Chewy Oatmeal Cookies?

There are a few tricks that we use in this recipe to make these Iced Oatmeal Cookies chewy:

• Rolled oats that are briefly pulverized. Leave the oats mostly intact and be careful not to over-process.
• Melted butter. Let it cool for about 2 minutes before making the dough.
• Brown sugar. The molasses in brown sugar compared to white sugar lends a delicious caramel aroma and flavor, as well as a chewy texture.

How do You Keep Oatmeal Cookies From Getting Hard?

Cookies have the tendency to dry out quicker if they’re not stored correctly. Make sure to store these in an airtight container (not in a cookie jar) at room temperature (not in the fridge) for best results.

More Baked Goods with Oats to Make

• Oatmeal Cream Pies with Rum-Raisin Brown Sugar Buttercream Frosting
• Cranberry Oatmeal Bars
• Oatmeal Muffins

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