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    Home » In the Kitchen » Recipe Reviews » Alton Brown's Oatiest Oatmeal Cookies Ever

    Alton Brown's Oatiest Oatmeal Cookies Ever

    Published: Dec 1, 2020 by Eric Samuelson

    Jump to Recipe Print Recipe

    A Good Eats recipe review of the oatmeal cookies that contain no wheat flour instead made with homemade toasted oat flour. The recipe called for rum soaked raisins but I choose to add chocolate chips instead. Whether you add raisins or chocolate chips, these cookies are the best.

    Also find out what I like to add to these cookies at Christmas time!

    Alton Brown's Oatmeal cookies with chocolate chips sitting on a white plate next to a small glass container of milk

    This post includes affiliate links. This means that at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase. These are products and services I recommend because I use or trust them. Cookies will be used to track the affiliate links you click.

    The Chocolate Chip reigns supreme as American's favorite cookies. 

    Trying doing a Google search for chocolate chip recipe. You will be overwhelmed with recipes. 

    So do we really need another chocolate chip cookie recipe? You bet your bottom dollar that we do!

    This isn't an ordinary chocolate chip cookie recipe. Oh no. These are the Oatiest - Alton Brown said it so now it's word - cookies of all time. 

    ❔ What Makes Them the Oatiest?

    Alton Brown had a great idea. Replace the wheat flour with oat flour when making oatmeal cookies. They are oatmeal cookies right, so why is there wheat flour in basically every recipe for oatmeal cookies?

    The oat flour is made by turning toasted rolled oats into a powder that looks like whole wheat flour. It's super easy to make yourself.

    The ingredients for the cookies : sugar, salt, baking powder, oat flour. butter, and chocolate chips are shown sitting on a counter top.

    ? Ingredients

    Here is what you will need for this recipe:

    • old-fashioned rolled oats (not quick oats)
    • baking powder
    • ground cinnamon
    • kosher salt
    • butter
    • dark brown sugar
    • pure cane sugar
    • large egg
    • vanilla extract
    • chocolate chips

    For the chocolate chips, I recommend semi-sweet chips. I also like the chocolate chunks that you can get at Trader Joe's.

    Homemade brown sugar inside the bowl of a food processor with the blade in the middle.

    ? How to Make Brown Sugar

    For the dark brown sugar the recipe calls for, I like to make my own brown sugar with cane sugar and molasses. I wrote about how to do this in a previous blog post.

    Step 1 shows the oats being toasted in a frying pan 
Step 2 shows the oats being processed into flour in a food procesor

    ? How to Make Oat Flour

    When I first tried this recipe I actually didn't own a food processor. yet. That sounds crazy to me now.

    So I didn't know if I could make the "oat flour". I tried a blender instead. And it still worked. It was a little more work and I had to be careful not to overheat the motor of the blender.

    I can attest it does work better in a food processor, but you can do a blender in a pinch.

    Start by toasting the oats with either of these methods

    • Spread the oats onto a half sheet pan. Bake until the oats start to smell and are lightly toasted. No more than 20 minutes. Keep a careful eye on them.
    • Toast the oats in a frying pan set over medium heat. Stir occasionally until toasted, you should be able to start smelling them slightly. Should take about 3 minutes. 

    I prefer the frying pan method as it's faster and I can keep a close eye on it. But you really do need to stand by the pan. Don't go walking off to do something else unless you want burnt oats.

    Once the oats are toasted and cool enough to handle, put them in the food processor until they are chopped fine and look like flour.

    Making the oat flour yourself is so much cheaper than buying already made oat flour.

    ? Making the Dough

    Here is how to put the dough together and bake the cookies.

    Step 3 shows a beater covered in the dough with the dough inside the stand mixer bowl
Step 4 shows the chocolate being mixed into the dough
    • In the bowl of your stand mixer add the butter and sugar. Beat until well combined and lighter in color, around 3 minutes. 
    • Scrap the side of the bowl. Then mix in the egg and vanilla extract until combined.
    • Add the flour mixture and combine on slow. You don't want flour going everywhere! 
    • Remove the bowl. Stir in the remaining whole oats you toasted along with the chocolate chips with a spatula.
    Step 5 shows the 6 cookies on a sheet pan lined with a silicone mat
Step 6 shows the cookies cooling on a black wire rack on the counter

    I recommend using a disher to form the cookies. It makes your life so much easier. Alton recommends using an 1 ½ inch disher, mine is more like 2 inches. So I ended up with less, but bigger cookies. That's fine by me.

    ? Top Cookie Tip - If you think your cookies are spreading too thin for your liking, you can chill the dough for at least a half hour before baking. This will harden the butter and the cookies won't spread as much. I highly recommend not skipping this step, especially if you want a more chewy cookie. Your patience will be rewarded.

    My son Elijah holding the mixing blade with dough on it.
    My son really loves helping to make cookies or any sweet treats. Google also loves to turn pictures of my son into "Color Pop" pictures. It must be the red hair.

    ❕ Why This Recipe Works

    We don't need the gluten that comes from wheat to make a cookie. We aren't baking a loaf of bread here. The butter is more than capable of keeping everything together.

    ? Are They Gluten Free?

    It depends on the oats you use. If you have someone who is really sensitive to gluten, then you will want to make sure that your oats are labeled as being certified gluten free. Often times oats are processed on shared equipment with wheat products, so cross contamination is a real possibility and can be dangerous to someone who is gluten intolerant. Read the packaging!

    ♻️ Substitutions

    You can buy oat flour if you are unable to make it yourself. Or you could try my favorite gluten free flour. It contains oats and teff flour, and make great cookies as well - I used it for these gluten free sugar cookies.

    If you don't want to do chocolate chips, you can stick to the traditional raisins or try these dried fruits:

    • Dried cherries
    • Dried blueberries
    • Dried cranberries

    For more fun, mix and match these different dried fruits.

    You could also try dried pears, strawberries, apricots, or peaches. You would need to chop those up before adding to the dough.

    ? Christmas Version

    These cookies are great to make at Christmas time with your favorite Christmas chocolate. Here is what I like:

    Nestle Tollhouse Peppermint Filled Truffles are shown spilling out of their bag onto a white counter top

    These are Nestle Tollhouse Peppermint Filled Truffles. Little bite sized truffles baked with a delicious peppermint filling. I actually had them in cookies last year in lieu of a cake for my December birthday! You can find them in the month of December in many stores that carry Nestle chips. I got these ones at Kroger.

    If mint and oat sounds like a weird combo to you, just trust me on this one and give it a try. They also have Winter Dark Chocolate and Mint morsels, which I use in these cookies.

    ? Other Alton Brown Recipes To Try

    • Chocolate Pudding
    • Chocapocalypse Cookies
    • Bonuts - Biscuit Donuts
    • Blueberry Buckle

    The Oatiest Chocolate Chip Cookies

    The most oat flavor ever packed into a chocolate chip cookie. Recipe developed by Alton Brown. Instructions written in my own words.
    No ratings yet
    Print Pin Rate
    Course: Cookie
    Cuisine: American
    Keyword: Alton Brown, cookies, gluten free, oats
    Prep Time: 30 minutes
    Cook Time: 15 minutes
    Total Time: 45 minutes
    Author: Alton Brown

    Ingredients

    • 16 ounces old-fashioned rolled oats
    • 1 tsp baking powder
    • 1 tsp ground cinnamon
    • pinch kosher salt
    • 10 ounces butter
    • 6 ounces dark brown sugar
    • 3 ½ ounces pure cane sugar
    • 1 large egg
    • 1 tsp vanilla extract
    • 8 ounces chocolate chips

    Instructions

    • Toast the oats in a frying pan set over medium heat.
    • Stir occasionally until toasted, you should be able to start smelling them slightly.
    • Should take about 3 minutes. Allow to cool enough so you could handle them.
    • Add 8 ounces of the oats to your food processor. Process them until they are the consistency of flour.
    • To the food processor bowl add the cinnamon, baking powder, and salt. Pulse a few times to combine.
    • In the bowl of your stand mixer add the butter and sugar. Beat until well combined and lighter in color, around 3 minutes. 
    • Scrap the side of the bowl. Then mix in the egg and vanilla extract until combined.
    • Add the ffour mixture and combine on slow so the flour doesn't go everywhere. 
    • Remove the bowl. Stir in the remaining whole oats you toasted along with the chocolate chips. 
    • Using a 2-inch disher, scoop the cookie dough out and onto a parchment lined half sheet pan. Make sure to a leave a couple inches between cookies. Don't overcrowd the pan. 
    • Bake the cookies for 12 to 15 minutes or until they are beginning to brown around the edges. I recommend rotating the pan(s) halfway through the bake time so even baking.

    Notes

    For these cookies to be gluten free make sure all your ingredients are, that means the oats need to be certified gluten free.
    Alternative way to toast the oats:
    • Spread the oats onto a half sheet pan. Bake until the oats start to smell and are lightly toasted. No more than 20 minutes. Keep a careful eye on them.
     
    Tried this recipe?Mention @eatlikenooneelse or tag #eatlikenooneelse
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    Hi! I'm Eric : Father of 4, living just south of Ann Arbor, MI. I'm a reformed picky eater finding a new way to not conform. Eating what's in season is my jam (I also make it!)

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