Soft and Chewy Oatmeal Scotchies
These Oatmeal Scotchies are incredibly soft, chewy, packed with butterscotch chips, and easy to make too. The perfect cookie for any occasion!
Sometimes I feel like butterscotch is such an underrated flavor. Even though it’s delicious, it tends to be one that I don’t think of very often. But today we’re changing that with these oatmeal scotchies, also known as oatmeal butterscotch cookies!
These cookies use my favorite oatmeal cookie base so they’re incredibly soft and chewy. There’s also a hint of cinnamon in the cookie dough which pairs perfectly with the oats and butterscotch chips. This recipe will make about two dozen cookies, but you can easily double it to make even more.
I actually made a batch of these to take to a family gathering and everyone loved them. I guarantee you and your family will adore them too!
How To Make Oatmeal Scotchies
These oatmeal scotchies are incredibly easy to throw together and use simple ingredients too. Here’s a little breakdown of how to make them:
- Cream butter and sugars together: You’ll want to cream your butter, brown sugar, and granulated sugar together until well combined or 1-2 minutes. As always, I use more brown sugar than granulated sugar in these cookies because it adds moisture, flavor, and makes them chewier!
- Beat in one egg and vanilla extract: I suggest stopping to scrape down your bowl before you mix in the egg and vanilla extract. I also recommend using a room temperature egg so it mixes together more evenly. If you forget to set it out ahead of time, simply place your egg in a bowl of warm water for about 5 minutes before using it.
- Add the dry ingredients: Once the wet ingredients are mixed together, you’ll mix together your dry ingredients: all-purpose flour, baking soda, ground cinnamon, salt, and some old-fashioned rolled oats. Then, just mix the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients until just combined.
- Mix in the butterscotch chips: You can mix in the butterscotch chips on low speed with the mixer or mix them in by hand with a rubber spatula.
- Cover and chill the cookie dough: I recommend covering and chilling the cookie dough for at least 30 minutes. This will help the cookies bake up thicker and the flavors will have a little time to come together too!
Once the cookie dough is chilled, you’ll remove it from the refrigerator and scoop it onto two prepared baking sheets. I like to use a 1.5 tablespoon cookie scoop for these cookies because it makes the perfect size cookie – not too big and not too small.
I also suggest rolling each ball of cookie dough and slightly flattening it before you bake them. This will help the cookies spread a little more in the oven. If you prefer your cookies thicker or more rounded, feel free to skip this step.
For softer cookies, it’s best to bake them for 10-13 minutes. The cookies will still be a little soft when you take them out of the oven, but they’ll continue to firm up more as they cool. If you prefer your cookies a little crispier, you can increase the baking time by 2-4 minutes.
To make these cookies a little prettier, I like to use a spoon to shape them and make them perfectly round right after they come out of the oven. I also love to set aside some extra butterscotch chips and press a few into the tops of each cookie too.
Baking Tips
- When measuring your flour, avoid scooping it from the container. Instead, stir your flour around to aerate it, then spoon it into your measuring cup, and level it off with the back of a knife.
- I recommend using old-fashioned rolled oats for best results and chewier cookies. However, quick-cooking oats should work fine too.
- It’s best to let the cookie dough chill for at least 30 minutes so the flavors have time to come together and the cookies bake up thicker. You can refrigerate the cookie dough for 2-3 days too, just let it sit at room temperature for 20-30 minutes if it’s too hard to scoop.
More Cookie Recipes To Bake!
Oatmeal Scotchies
Ingredients
- ½ cup (115 grams) unsalted butter, softened
- ½ cup (100 grams) light brown sugar packed
- ¼ cup (50 grams) granulated sugar
- 1 large egg room temperature
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- 1 cup (125 grams) all-purpose flour spooned & leveled
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- 1 and ½ cups (150 grams) old-fashioned rolled oats
- 1 cup (180 grams) butterscotch chips
Instructions
- In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, or in a large mixing bowl using a handheld mixer, beat the butter, brown sugar, and granulated sugar together until well combined (about 1-2 minutes). Add the egg and vanilla extract and mix until fully combined.
- In a separate large mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, ground cinnamon, and salt. Stir in the old-fashioned rolled oats.
- Add dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix until just combined, then mix in the butterscotch chips until evenly distributed in the cookie dough.
- Cover the cookie dough and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.
- Meanwhile, preheat oven to 350°F (177°C). Line two large baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mats and set aside.
- Once the cookie dough is chilled, remove it from the refrigerator. Using a 1.5 tablespoon cookie scoop, scoop the cookie dough and drop onto the prepared baking sheets, making sure to leave some space between each one. Roll into balls and slightly flatten each ball of dough.
- Bake at 350°F (177°C) for 10-13 minutes or until the cookies are set and edges are lightly browned. Remove from the oven and cool on the baking sheets for 5-10 minutes, then carefully transfer the cookies to a wire rack to cool completely.
Notes
Delicious! I followed the recipe and the cookies turned out wonderful!
These are really good.. I also used white chocolate chips and those were amazing also..
A very good cookie! This recipe works well as the base for oatmeal-raisin, too, which happen to be my husband’s favorite. I like to double the batch and add 1 cup raisins (by volume) to half of the dough and 1 cup butterscotch chips to the other half. Despite my deviation, there’s been no discernible change in texture between the two. Thank you for a solid recipe that gives consistent results. We are happy campers over here!
These are delicious and the perfect consistency. Grateful for the measurements in grams. Helps them be consistently good every time.
I swear I remember orange zest being used in these cookies, now I can’t find it anywhere in any recipe
This recipe has never had orange zest, maybe you’re confusing it with another one? You could add a couple of teaspoons of orange zest to this cookie dough though.
These are incredible. Thank you!
Amazing recipe. Cookies turned out perfect!
Only suggestion would be to decrease the amount of sugar. They are VERY sweet.
Otherwise SO good and will be adding them to my favorite cookie recipes! Thank You!!
Instead of the cup of butterscotch chips, I added 1/2 cup of them, and 1/2 cup each of shredded coconut, and chocolate peanut butter chips. They were amazing!
These were delicious. I had some rolled oats that I got for some Christmas cookies and needed to use the rest of them plus I had some scotch chips that I hadn’t used. I looked up and followed the recipe but used 3/4 cup scotch chips and 1/4 cup chocolate chips. Still chewy the 2nd day too.
These came out great! Followed recipe, but added chocolate chips and nuts
Really wanted to like this recipe. As others have mentioned, they burn quick. Cooked for about 8 minutes and they were black on the bottom. I have thick cooking pans and refrigerated for 1/2 hour as directed. Very disappointing. Flavor was good before baking not really edible after they burned so quickly
I’ve made these cookies dozens of times and in several different ovens and never had an issue with them burning. That can happen for a variety of different reasons though – using a dark cookie sheet, having your oven rack too low, your oven temperature is off, using too much baking soda or sugar, baking more than one pan of cookies in the oven, greasing your baking sheet, etc.
I love these. I substituted half shortening for the butter digestive issues in my family adapted well and will do vegan next!
Cookies came out very dry. I used tin foil instead of parchment paper but I don’t think that alone caused the dryness. Not 100% sure what went wrong.
I don’t recommend baking cookies on foil. It conducts more heat, which causes your cookies to bake faster and can cause them to turn out dry.
Calories for one cookie?
I’m not sure on the nutritional information, but you can plug everything into an online calculator (like My Fitness Pal) to get an estimate.
The best cookie ever! Have you tried adding a little orange extract? It pushes the cookies over the top! My girls make a batch for me (because I’m special, don’t you know) every Christmas!
Made these for my boys tonight as a treat for after basketball. And man, what a waste of ingredients. :(( I followed the exact recipe, even weighed them. But every single cookie spread all over the place. Garbaged them all. Boo!!!!!
Sorry to hear that the cookies didn’t turn out well for you, Charlotte. If you followed the recipe exactly, they should not have spread all over. Did you make sure to only use 1 stick of butter? And did you double check the amount of flour and oats that you used?
I just baked these. They turned out excellent! I doubled the recipe. I used salted butter so added only a pinch more. I baked them at just under 350 as my oven runs hot. I did a two cookie test run at 1o min and they were so good! When I brought them out of the oven, I placed 3 chocolate chips on top of each cookie. This is a great recipe!! Thank you!!!
These cookies were really delicious! We doubled the recipe and had plenty, I may add more salt next time because my butterscotch chips were very sweet! Wonderful recipe!
So glad you enjoyed the cookies, Crissy! You could also sprinkle a little sea salt on the cookies after they come out of the oven. I’ve done that before and it does help balance out the sweetness of the butterscotch chips a bit!
Hey Danielle,
These sounded yummy and I gave them a try tonight. They ARE yummy and I love the butterscotch twist in the oatmeal cookie but I had a bit of a problem with the butterscotch chips on the bottom and sides kind of burning a little in the oven so my cookies ended up with little burned pools around some of the sides where the butterscotch had melted (caramelized?) in the oven. I know this is “user-error” somewhere but I’m not sure where I went wrong or what I could do to prevent that. Other than that, the cookies turned out very well (although I think I’d bake them for just a minute less next time) and I was able to break the burned edges away but I’d like to prevent that in the future. Any ideas what caused this and what I can do differently to prevent it? Thanks so much for another wonderful recipe!!
Did you happen to use a dark baking sheet? If so, that could be one reason that they burned.
I actually needed 2 baking sheets for this many cookies and one is definitely darker than the other. Those cookies DID get a little darker but it still happened (to a lesser extent) on the other lighter baking sheet as well. I only baked them for 8 minutes (my oven tends to run hot). I’m already thinking next time I’d bake a little less. What is a minimum baking time for eggs to actually bake in the cookies? Would 6 minutes be enough baking time lol. I’m just not sure what I did wrong. Cookies are not really my forte. I wonder if baking less time would solve the problem? Or oven too hot, maybe 325 would be better in an oven that tends to run hot. Or a lighter colour baking tray? What do you think would help? What should I try differently? The cookies themselves are really very good 🙂 The cookies themselves didn’t burn, only the butterscotch which oozed out the sides onto the parchment on the baking sheet as they were baking making little burnt pools around the edges of the cookies. Thanks so much for your help!
Have you tested your oven temperature with an oven thermometer? The baking time may vary some depending on how small/large you scoop them too. You can try reducing your oven temperature to 325°F and removing them from the oven as soon as the tops of the cookies are set.
Hmm ok, thanks! I used a 1.5 tbsp scoop and the cookies came out a good size for me. I will try lowering the heat and removing them sooner from the oven. I don’t have a thermometer but I’ve had this oven for years now and I always decrease baking/cooking time and sometimes temperature too to compensate – I know it runs hot. I’ll try a shorter baking time next time and see if it helps. Thanks so much for your help Danielle! I’ve never had this issue before but I’m new to baking cookies and not very good at it yet and I appreciate the tips and suggestions 🙂 Your site is wonderful as a help and guide for those of us who aren’t comfortable with baking to learn some wonderful new recipes!
I just made these cookies. Wonderful! I watch a lot of baking shows and read a lot of recipes but hardly ever bake anything. I was looking for an oatmeal Scottchie cookie recipe with low sugar and this is it. We are loving these. Thank you so much. Ellen
So glad you enjoyed the cookies, Ellen!
We made these tonight! Delicious! They are sweet, but not too sweet. We even split butterscotch with dark chocolate. Yumm!