Made from only 6 ingredients, these easy lace cookies are ready in 30 minutes and they taste like sweet brown butter and caramel. Sandwich with a little chocolate for an extra special treat. Everyone loves these and they’re gluten free too!
Welcome to day 7 of Sally’s Cookie Palooza! If you’re just joining us, here are all the recipes published so far:
- Peppermint Bark Cookies
- Spritz Cookies
- Christmas Cookies in a Jar (with free printable!)
- Santa’s Whiskers Cookies
- Iced Oatmeal Cookies
- Gingerbread House (December Baking Challenge!)
Day 7 calls for something easy. So easy you’ll think you’re doing something wrong. Made from only 6 ingredients, these lace cookies are ready in 30 minutes and they taste like sweet brown butter and caramel. As if you took caramel, mixed it with brown butter, and made it into a thin and crispy cookie. THEY’RE HEAVEN.
What are Lace Cookies?
Lace cookies are very thin and crunchy cookies made from butter, sugar, salt, and other ingredients. The other ingredients vary depending on the recipe. Some recipes use oats and flour, other lace cookie recipes use nuts. Lace cookies get their name from their delicate and see-through appearance. My mom always used to make these—they’re a beautiful cookie!
They’re also one of my favorite gluten free dessert recipes. It’s nice to have a gluten free option among your spread of Christmas cookies!
How to Make Lace Cookies
In an effort to keep these gluten free AND to add elevated flavor, my lace cookie recipe uses almond flour. In addition to almond flour, you’ll also need: butter, brown sugar, salt, milk or corn syrup, and vanilla extract. That’s it!
- The cookie dough is prepared on the stove. And I use the term “cookie dough” loosely as this is more like a cake batter. All the ingredients, except for the vanilla extract (stirred in later), are cooked for a few minutes in a saucepan before spooning onto the baking sheet. This cooking stage melts the ingredients together, while baking in the oven will create caramelized sugar and brown butter flavors.
- No chilling the cookie dough. But let it rest for about 5 minutes. The cookie dough will slightly thicken, making spooning onto the baking sheets easier.
- Only 1 scant teaspoon of cookie dough per cookie. Because they’ll spread!
- Short baking time – only 8 minutes. The cookies won’t spread out at first, but around the 4 minute mark, they’ll begin their spreading journey! Listen to the butter sizzling around the edges. I love these unique cookies!
Forget everything I taught you about how to prevent cookies from spreading. You want lace cookies to be extra thin and crisp because that’s where all the caramelization happens. 🙂
Be Extra
Though lace cookies have the most interesting flavor and texture, it’s Christmastime which means we can add a little flair. Sandwich your lace cookies with a generous spread of Nutella or melted chocolate and prepare for the cookie sandwich of a lifetime. Can you truly think of a better flavor combination than butter, caramelized sugar, vanilla, almond, and chocolate?! Nutella can get a little messy, so if you’re gifting or traveling with the lace cookies—I suggest melted chocolate. Unlike Nutella, melted chocolate will set. I have instructions for chocolate in the recipe notes below.
If you love adding a little chocolate to your cookies, give your chocolate ginger cookies and pinwheel cookies a dip in chocolate, too!
With an ingredient line up like this, how can lace cookies not taste good?
I just love how quick and simple these are—much appreciated during the busy holiday season and PERFECT if you want a unique cookie recipe to serve alongside the classics like Christmas sugar cookies and shortbread!
Easy Lace Cookies
- Prep Time: 20 minutes
- Cook Time: 8 minutes
- Total Time: 30 minutes
- Yield: 30-32 cookies or 15-16 sandwiches
- Category: Cookies
- Method: Baking
- Cuisine: American
Description
Made from only 6 ingredients, these lace cookies are ready in 30 minutes and they taste like sweet brown butter and caramel. Sandwich with a little chocolate for an extra special treat. Everyone loves these and they’re gluten free too!
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup (8 Tbsp; 113g) unsalted butter
- 2/3 cup (130g) packed light or dark brown sugar
- 3/4 cup (75g)Â almond flour
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1 Tablespoon (15ml)Â light or dark corn syrup or milk*
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- optional: 1/2 cup Nutella or melted chocolate (see note)
Instructions
- Melt butter in a medium saucepan on low heat. Once melted, add the brown sugar, almond flour, salt, and milk/corn syrup. Cook and whisk until sugar has dissolved and ingredients are completely combined, around 3-4 minutes. (Note: If melted butter is separating from the mixture, remove the pan from heat and vigorously whisk until it is all combined again. It will eventually come back together.)
- Remove from heat and whisk in vanilla extract. Mixture will be grainy and shiny. Allow cookie dough to sit and thicken for about 5-10 minutes as the oven preheats. The mixture will thicken as it cools down.
- Preheat oven to 350°F (177°C). Line 2-3 large baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mats.
- Drop scant teaspoonfuls (1 scant teaspoon of mixture per cookie, not Tablespoon) 3 inches apart onto prepared baking sheets. Bake for 6-8 minutes until golden brown around the edges. The edges and centers will sizzle and bubble as the cookies bake!
- Allow cookies to cool for 5 full minutes on the baking sheets before transferring to a rack to cool completely. Cookies dry and crisp up as they cool.
- Once cool, enjoy cookies or sandwich with Nutella or melted chocolate. To sandwich, spread either Nutella or melted chocolate onto the bottom of one cooled cookie and sandwich with another. See recipe note if using chocolate.
- Cookies without Nutella/chocolate filling will stay fresh covered at room temperature for 1 week. Cookies with Nutella/chocolate will stay fresh covered at room temperature for 3 days or in the refrigerator for 1 week.
Notes
- Make Ahead Instructions:Â Baked cookies, with or without Nutella/chocolate filling, freeze well up to 3 months. Thaw overnight in the refrigerator and bring to room temperature, if desired, before serving. You can prepare the cookie dough in steps 1 and 2, cover tightly once cooled, and refrigerate for up to 3 days. Bring to room temperature, then continue with the recipe.
- Special Tools (affiliate links): Saucepan | Whisk | Baking Sheets | Silicone Baking Mats or Parchment Paper | Cooling Rack
- Almond Flour: I like using Bob’s Red Mill brand almond flour, found in the baking aisle of major grocery stores. If you can’t find almond flour in the store, you can make your own by simply pulsing almonds until they reach a gritty and rough flour-like consistency. Instead of almond flour, you can use the same amount of oat flour. (Buy oat flour or pulse whole oats into a flour.) All-purpose flour isn’t ideal because the cookies will not spread or caramelize. Some readers have used coconut flour, but note that the taste and texture is off. I strongly recommend almond flour.
- Either 1 Tablespoon of milk or corn syrup works in this lace cookie recipe. You need a liquid and the resulting cookie tastes exactly the same no matter which you choose. I prefer corn syrup because I find it makes the cookies just a *little* crispier.
- Nutella can get a little messy, so if you’re gifting or traveling with the lace cookies—I suggest using melted chocolate for sandwiching the cookies. Unlike Nutella, melted chocolate will set. Instead of sandwiching, try dunking the cookies in melted chocolate or drizzling the chocolate on top. Whichever way you prefer, use about 6-8 ounces of chopped semi-sweet chocolate. (I like Ghirardelli or Bakers brand, both found in the baking aisle.) Melt the chopped chocolate in a double boiler or in the microwave in 15-second increments, stopping and stirring after each until completely smooth. Sandwich, dip, or drizzle onto cooled cookies. Allow chocolate to set completely in the refrigerator for 20 minutes or at room temperature for 30 minutes.
Hi Sally
Made this recipe 3 or 4 times and it is a major success,but what really bothers me is that they spread like crazy and to fix that i had to make very small balls of the dough,now my question can i bake them in a muffin pan?because i would love it if they all had the same size and shape,also it would prevent them from spreading in to one big cookie
Hi Jala, These cookies should be very thin, delicate, and almost see through – that’s where they get their name 🙂 We only use 1 scant teaspoon of cookie dough per cookie, because we want them to spread! We haven’t tested them in a muffin pan, and I’m afraid they might be difficult to remove but please let us know if you try it.
I made my own almond flour but must have done something wrong. Paper thin and I mean paper thin with he consistency of semi hardened caramel. Would have been great broken up to top a cupcake. Will try again another day when my blood surges normalizes. Haha.
Great recipe. I just discovered your site…….by accident. Love the idea of your cookie palooza. I’ve been baking 15 different Xmas cookies each year for c. 20 years. Great fun to find so many interesting ones on YOUR site. I love all your comments, substitutions, explanations for how/why you do things a certain way. I’m quite sure I’ll be using more of your recipes. In addition to giving me ideas, I found your site just plain FUN!!
I’m probably one of your few male cookie baker followers……but then I do all the cooking in our house (my wife does the dishes—good arrangement). So thanks for having such a fun, well photographed, playful yet informative site. About these lace cookies. I used walnut flour and they taste great. Puzzled about numbers. I used my tiniest scoop which is about 1.5 teaspoons—and I tried to fill it about 1/2 way, as per your “scant teaspoon” direction. But curiously, mine seem a tad big, but I doubled your recipe and got 88 cookies—using more batter than you suggest. By scant teaspoon, do you mean a kitchen teaspoon or a measuring spoon. I tried to find online a real scoop with a release that is an actual teaspoon but neither my wife nor I could find one. I haven’t put the chocolate in but I can tell these will be a hit. Daughter #1 has just been diagnosed with celiacs disease so she will like these. I’m trying to make 2/3 of this year’s 15 cookie types gluten free. There are plenty of recipes but not all are really good. Thanks for this one. It is terrific!
Made these cookies tonight as instructed and they turned out perfect. Melted dark chocolate and made half of the batch into sandwiches. Husband loved them. Thanks Sally for another great recipe!
yum with a capital Y! these came out great. Certainly not as perfectly round as yours but tasted amazing. Just ate the last of them today, (3 days later), and they were still delicious. I spread a blend of milk and dark chocolate on the back of them and they were fab. Thank you :).
I made these and they taste good but, was a lot thicker than the batter pictured. Could I be using too much flour? I used the amount shown in the recipe but, other recipes I have seen use less. Definitely will experiment and try again.
Thank you for not including the nutritution facts for this recipe (or they weren’t visible for me) because I do NOT wanna know how much sugar and calories is in each one! I ate…no I’m too embarrasses to publicly admit how many of these I ate. These were DELICIOUS!
I was worried at first because my dough (batter?) didn’t look like yours pictured. It was more dark and pretty doughy, but they came out fine. Thank you for sharing this recipe, it is now a favorite in my family.
Didn’t work for me:((. Used oat flour instead of almond. The rest was as per the recipe. They spread fine, and looked like perfect lace cookies, but they didn’t harden enough to be crisp, no matter how long they stayed on the counter. Disappointed…
Hi Sally,
These look really good and I was wondering if while they are still warm from the oven, I could place them over a little cup or something to make them bowl shaped. I wanted to use them as little tartlet shells and fill them with chocolate mousse. Do you think that would work?
Hi Vicki! Some readers have tried this while the baked cookies are still pretty warm, but I personally haven’t so I can’t say for sure.
It worked! It took me a couple tries to time it correctly. The family enjoyed them.
Another yummy recipe! If you like the browned bits on the corners of blondies or the browned edges of cookies, these are for you! I made two batches today, and mine must be smaller than Sally’s because I got about 50 per batch. With just a few ingredients, these are super easy to mix up. When whisking the dough, the melted butter may rise to the top, just whisk harder but watch out for drops of flying butter. I used stone bar pans and an aluminum baking sheet, and each pan took at least 10 minutes to get nicely browned. I just started with 8 minutes and kept bumping it up. Stay close by as they will get too brown rather quickly. I brushed melted dark chocolate (71%) on the backs of half of them, but I should’ve done chocolate chips as recommended. The bitterness of the chocolate, which I like, overpowers the browned butter taste. I look forward to making these again!
Hi, Sally. I made these cookies and they turned out beautiful and really tasty; but they were so stuck to the parchment paper that the paper would break off rather than separate from the cookie. They were so tasty my husband and I tried them even with the paper, but if you have any solutions for avoiding this in the future I would really appreciate it, because I loved them and I want to make them again, ideally paperless next time =)
Hi Rosana, thank you so much for trying these lace cookies and I’m glad you enjoyed them! This hasn’t happened to me before. Were the cookies under-baked by chance? Do you have silicone baking mats? I find those nonstick surfaces are best for removing these delicate cookies. Otherwise, could you try removing the cookies while still a little warm. Use a very thin metal spatula to help.
These cookies turned out great! My 10 year old daughter easily made them on the stove— the butter separated but some whisking helped it merge back. We used a teaspoon to drop the dough and sandwiched them with melted chocolate. Buttery and sweet!
Super recipe. Awesome laces that our grandchildren loved. Us too!
Thank you for sharing this awesome recipe
These were so easy and fun to make! The only problem I had was that they came out more like ovals than circles…any idea why?
Thanks!
These cookies are really, really good and easy to make. Mine spread a lot more than expected. I placed them 3 inches apart and wound up with 3 giant cookie blobs! They were easy to cut apart once they cooled though and were super tasty so it didn’t really matter. I must have put too much dough in each cookie. When dropping the dough, did you mean an actual measuring teaspoon? I used a teaspoon-size cookie scoop, which is somewhat bigger.
Took about 9 minutes in my oven. Will definitely make again and use less dough per cookie next time. Thanks!
Followed recipe exactly. Batter was lumpy and crumbly and cookies did not spread at all. Wasted ingredients. Last recipe I will use from this website unfortunately.
Great recipe! I didn’t have corn syrup or milk so I used maple syrup instead. They came out with such a warm, buttery, mapley flavor I plan to make them again that way!
These are delicious cookies. We can’t find flour at all, so we chose this recipe. Followed the recipe exactly and they’re nearly all gone after 1-2 days in this house!
I made these today. They are. AMAZING. I didn’t have milk or corn syrup so I used heavy cream. They came out chewy in the middle, crunchy on the side, and simply melted in my mouth. They were so good I didn’t turn them into those sandwiches because it just wasn’t needed. These cookies alone are amazing. What I may do next time because they are a bit malleable is roll them up and in the opening put some ice cream.
Easy to make and perfect. Thank you! I found, like others, the temp and time had to be adjusted. When it says a scant amount per cookie, they’re not kidding.
My first time trying lace cookies. Mine came out very irregular, I think because I spooned them unevenly on the baking sheet. Taste and consistency-wise though, they came out great. Nice and chewy. I replaced 1/4 cup of the almond flour with oats.
I rolled them up and dipped them in chocolate instead of making sandwiches because there were not enough cookies (18 pcs only).
These didn’t work for me. The butter separated from the batter On the stove top and then cookies didn’t run. Disappointed.
Hi Ryan! If you remove the pan from the stove and whisk vigorously, the mixture will come back together. Thanks for trying this recipe!
Oh my!! So delicious!! Buttery and toffee-ish! Easy to make, just follow the recipe exactly! Thanks for another winner, Sally
If I make this recipe again, I will add the brown sugar to the butter until dissolved and then add the remaining ingredients. As followed, it was impossible to whisk the ingredients and the butter separated.
Taking back my original rating. Could not salvage the cookies as followed in this recipe. All the ingredients went in the trash. As an experienced baker, this recipe is a fail.
Must have been you my friend. Cannot argue with all the other successes.
I tried these and must have done something wrong. They did not spread out at all. Followed the recipe to a T except I used light brown sugar instead of dark. Timed the dough on the stove for 3 minutes over the heat after the butter had melted but my dough did not look the same as the picture on this post (mine did actually look like cookie dough instead of cake batter) so I think that was the problem. Any advice to help me on getting the timing on the dough right?
Can you make these the day or night before and will they still stay crisp/crunchy? Or will they be a more chewy texture the next day? Thank you
Hi Carrie! Without filling the cookies to make sandwiches (such as with Nutella or chocolate), they stay relatively crunchy on day 2.
Thank you so much for the quick response. When you have made cookie sandwiches with chocolate in the middle (I’m going to be putting them in waxed/glassine bags so I figured that would be less messy than nutella), how do those hold up? If I make them the night before, will they still be crunchy the next day? Thank you!
I tried to make these using the ingredients provided. Every batch stuck to the paper like glue and I couldn’t remove the cookies. All to waste, any tips?
Your recipes have always been a success for me. I recently started trying gluten free recipes due to celiac. I tried these first time and they tasted great and even looked very lacy :). Although they were not at all crispy and crunchy,instead they were soft and chewy . I weighed the ingredients and followed the recipe as-is . Any idea what might have happened ? I would like to try these again.
Thanks Nilofar! Give them time to sit– after completely cooling and sitting at room temperature, they quickly crisp up.
I wanted to make these cookies this weekend for an Oscar party I’m attending. My friend’s daughter has celiac so they seemed like a good option, but then I realized that they have butter in them & the family is currently off dairy as well. I can get vegan chocolate, so that is fine, but do you have an option to replace the butter? Please and thank you.
Pepper
Hi Pepper, while I haven’t personally tried it in this particular recipe, you can try making these with a vegan butter substitute such as Earth Balance.
Tried it with coconut oil, because that is what I had on hand. Really didn’t work. C’est la vie.
I made these using vegan butter (I believe it was the Country Crock brand) and they turned out perfect! One of my favorite recipes I’ve ever made!
These are delightful! Thank you 🙂
Made it yesterday December 30, 2019. I couldn’t believe how easy it was, next time it will take me even less time because I know what to expect and I will make a double batch. I glued them together with the melted chocolate chips., They are thin but they don’t break just bend. Definitely a keeper. By the time they called they were the exact consistency of Plato so I just made equal size balls and flatten them with a glass a little so all of them came out more or less the same size. In my oven eight minutes was too much and they came out brown. The next and the following batches I made for seven minutes and that’s perfect and that’s what I recommend to everybody
I made these and sandwiched them with white chocolate thinned just a bit with a Tbsp of coconut oil, which I like the taste of and makes it more spreadable when melted … plus coconut oil will harden along with the chocolate if kept in AC conditions. I gave them out in gift bags to coworkers for the holidays, and I’ve been bombarded with requests for the recipe since, lol. Thanks for making me so popular