Chewy Oatmeal Cookies

There are few pleasures in life greater than a hot, fresh baked cookie, right out of the oven. While my first true cookie love was a good old chocolate chip, I have made room in my heart for a new love, and his name is oatmeal. A couple months back, I posted a recipe for these Scrumptious Blueberry Pecan Oatmeal Bars. I highly recommend trying these guys out, if you haven’t yet! In the post, I talked about my early uncertainty when it came to oatmeal and how it took some time for me to figure out how exactly I liked it.

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My biggest beef with oatmeal cookies was that everywhere you turn, somebody was putting raisins in the mix. That didn't fly with me, so I started whipping up my very own raisin free batches of oatmeal cookies. These cookies are soft and chewy, with a hearty bite from the oats and pecans. The subtle warmth that the cinnamon adds is one of my favorite elements in these cookies. These cookies are all around comfort food and are just seriously delicious!

Fun fact: The recipe for the blueberry oatmeal bars (minus the coconut and blueberries) is the exact same as these cookies, so you can get double duty out of this recipe by making twice the dough and splitting it in half to make a batch of bars and a batch of cookies! Win!!!

Whipping these up is pretty simple. Of course, it takes a little longer than the pre-sliced, ready made cookie dough, but the extra few minutes is so worth it! And look…I’m no stranger to the convenience of the break and bake! I have devoured my fair share of Toll House cookies, and I will again, but when I have all the ingredients and the extra time, you better believe I’m making a batch of these babies!

To get these cookies baking, start by preheating your oven to 350*F. In your stand mixer, (like this beauty here) combine light brown sugar with room temperature, unsalted butter. You can help it along by stopping the mixer a few times and spooning out the butter that gets caught in the mixer attachment. Once combined, add egg and vanilla and keep on mixing. In a separate bowl, add your flour, salt, cinnamon and baking soda and mix all ingredients together until they’re evenly combined. Slowly add the dry ingredients into the mixer, then add your oats and pecans. Mix just long enough for the oats and pecans to incorporate into the dough. 

At this point, you could get these guys in the oven and they would be totally delicious, oatmeal pecan cookies. But why stop there when you can take those cookies to the next level. Personally, I love a little variety, so when finishing off this dough, I separated it into about four sections right in the mixing bowl and add in some tasty morsels. You can get creative with whatever you want to add to your dough, but here, I decided on a few of the regular oatmeal pecan and three separate additions; classic chocolate chips, toasty sliced almonds and a hefty drizzle of Nutella (about 2 tbsp of each ingredient) and mixed each one in with a spoon. 

The last step is to drop heaping tablespoon sized pieces onto a parchment lined pan. Bake for 10 minutes, more or less, depending on how chewy or crunchy you like your cookies. For me, the perfect cookie should come out of the oven right when the edges start to brown, but the middle looks slightly under done. By the time they've cooled down enough to not burn your fingertips off, they will be perfect, with a soft and chewy center, with a chewy outer edge. Total cookie perfection!

Thanks for Chewsing!