Soft and chewy oatmeal scotchies are cinnamon-spiced, sweetened with brown sugar, packed with oats, and loaded with butterscotch chips. With crisp edges and chewy centers, every bite is buttery, delicious, and packed with texture.
Butterscotch chips or butterscotch morsels, whatever you call them, are an oatmeal cookie’s best friend. Dare I say these two are even better friends than oatmeal cookies and raisins? And you know how I feel about oatmeal raisin cookies!
These Are the Best Oatmeal Scotchies And Here’s Why
Butterscotch brings you right back to childhood eating butterscotch candies at grandma’s kitchen table. Pair that with cinnamon and these cookies scream nostalgia. Not only are they nostalgic, they’re:
- Soft and chewy in the center
- Slightly crisp on the edges
- Loaded with oats for mega texture
- Studded with butterscotch morsels
- Cinnamon spiced
- Just like grandma’s
- No crazy ingredients or mixing techniques
I plead my case. Oatmeal scotchies rule.
Best Ingredients to Use in Oatmeal Scotchies
- Flour: All-purpose flour is the structure of the cookies.
- Baking Soda: Baking soda helps the cookies rise.
- Cinnamon: Cinnamon and butterscotch are a winning flavor combination. You’ll love the sweet cinnamon spice in each bite.
- Salt: Salt adds flavor.
- Butter: We use 1 cup of room temperature butter in this cookie recipe. Make sure your butter is at proper room temperature—if it’s too warm, your cookies will overspread. Here are my tips and tricks for how to prevent cookies from spreading. See the picture below for properly softened butter. It’s actually cool to touch, not warm. When you press it, your finger will make an indent. For even more information, here’s an in-depth post about room temperature butter. Worth the read!
- Sugar: Sugar is not only used for sweetness, but also for providing structure and tenderness. We use both brown sugar and white granulated sugar in this recipe. I like to use more brown sugar than white sugar because (1) brown sugar has incredible flavor and (2) brown sugar contains more moisture than white, which produces a softer cookie. I use the higher brown sugar to white sugar ratio in my chocolate chip cookies, too.
- Eggs: 2 eggs help bind everything together.
- Molasses: Molasses is my secret ingredient! Just 1 scant Tablespoon of molasses in oatmeal cookies enhances all the wonderful flavors of buttery sweet oatmeal butterscotch cookies.
- Vanilla Extract: Pure vanilla extract adds flavor.
- Oats: There are a ton of oats in this recipe. Whole old-fashioned oats provide a fabulously chewy texture.
- Butterscotch Morsels: Butterscotch morsels are a little smaller than chocolate chips, so you can really pack them into each cookie. I actually counted 20 of them in 1 single cookie. And that’s not an exaggeration!
Room temperature butter is about 65°F (18°C), which is likely cooler than your kitchen. So if your cookies are spreading too much, you’re probably softening your butter too much. Good rule of thumb: set your butter out on the counter 1 hour before you begin. If it gets too soft (use your finger to test), place back in the refrigerator for 10 minutes. Don’t sabotage your efforts; make sure your butter is the correct consistency before you begin.
By the way, here’s my trick to soften butter quickly.
Overview: How to Make Oatmeal Scotchies
These soft and chewy oatmeal scotchies start from my base oatmeal cookie recipe. We use the same base recipe for oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, magic 5 cookies, oatmeal raisin cookies, and many more. It’s an oatmeal cookie recipe I’ve been playing around with for years and I love creating new variations! What’s even better? They come together quickly and easily.
- Whisk the dry ingredients together, beat the wet ingredients together, then combine both. Mix in the oats and butterscotch morsels. This is a super sticky and thick cookie dough. Cover the dough and chill it in the refrigerator for at least 45 minutes, an important step for this cookie dough. When you’re ready to bake the cookies, scoop about 3 Tablespoons of cookie dough per cookie and form into balls. Here is the large cookie scoop I love and highly recommend for this sticky dough. Bake the cookies until they’re lightly browned on the sides. While the cookies are still warm, I like to press a few more butterscotch morsels into the tops—this is only for looks!
More Favorite Cookie Recipes
- Peanut Butter Cookies
- Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Oatmeal Raisin Cookies
- White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Cookies
- Sugar Cookies
- Monster Cookies
Soft & Chewy Oatmeal Scotchies
- Prep Time: 1 hour, 10 minutes (includes dough chilling)
- Cook Time: 14 minutes
- Total Time: 1 hour, 40 minutes
- Yield: 20-22 cookies
- Category: Dessert
- Method: Baking
- Cuisine: American
Description
These soft & chewy oatmeal scotchies cookies are loaded with butterscotch chips in every bite. The centers are chewy and soft, the edges are crisp, and every bite is buttery delicious!
Ingredients
- 1 and 1/2 cups (188g) all-purpose flour (spooned & leveled)
- 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 3/4 teaspoon salt
- 1 cup (16 Tbsp; 226g) unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
- 1 cup (200g) packed light or dark brown sugar
- 1/2 cup (100g) granulated sugar
- 2 large eggs, at room temperature
- 1 Tablespoon (15ml) unsulphured or dark molasses (do not use blackstrap; I prefer Grandma’s brand)
- 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
- 3 cups (255g) old-fashioned whole rolled oats
- 2 cups (280g) butterscotch morsels
Instructions
- Whisk the flour, cinnamon, baking soda, and salt together in a medium bowl. Set aside.
- In a large bowl using a hand mixer or a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, beat the butter, brown sugar, and granulated sugar together on medium-high speed until combined and creamy, about 2 minutes. Add the eggs, molasses, and vanilla and beat on high speed until combined, about 1 minute. Scrape down the sides and up the bottom of the bowl and beat again as needed to combine.
- Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix on low until combined. With the mixer running on low speed, beat in the oats and butterscotch morsels. Dough will be thick and sticky. Cover and chill the dough for at least 45 minutes in the refrigerator (and up to 4 days). If chilling for longer than a few hours, allow to sit at room temperature for at least 30 minutes before rolling and baking because the dough will be quite hard.
- Preheat oven to 350°F (177°C). Line baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mats. Set aside.
- Scoop cookie dough (here’s the large cookie scoop I love), about 3 Tablespoons of dough per cookie, and place 4 inches apart on the baking sheets. Bake for 13-14 minutes or until lightly browned on the sides. The centers will look very soft.
- Remove from the oven and allow cookies to cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely. While the cookies are still warm, I like to press a few more butterscotch morsels into the tops—this is only for looks!
- Cookies stay fresh covered at room temperature for up to 1 week.
Notes
- Make Ahead Instructions: You can make the cookie dough and chill it in the refrigerator for up to 4 days. Allow to come to room temperature then continue with step 4. Baked cookies freeze well for up to 3 months. Unbaked cookie dough balls freeze well for up to 3 months. Bake frozen cookie dough balls for an extra minute, no need to thaw. Here are my tips and tricks for how to freeze cookie dough.
- Special Tools (affiliate links): Electric Mixer (Handheld or Stand) | Baking Sheet | Silicone Baking Mat or Parchment Paper | Large Cookie Scoop | Cooling Rack
- Molasses: 1 Tablespoon of molasses helps give these cookies incredible flavor. Be sure to use unsulphured or dark molasses (do not use blackstrap; I prefer Grandma’s brand). If you don’t have any, simply leave it out. Do not replace with anything else.
- Brown Sugar: I prefer using dark brown sugar in oatmeal scotchies.
- Be sure to check out my top 5 cookie baking tips AND these are my 10 must-have cookie baking tools.
Can you leave the molasses out, are is it very important for this oatmeal recipe?!
You can leave it out, yes.
I would not change one thing about this recipe, my first time baking cookies from scratch …..got a mixer for Christmas and these cookies are scrumptious!! Thank you Sally. I’m looking forward to making more of your recipes.
followed the recipe exactly, and they came out PERFECT! this one’s going in my Keeper’s Folder 🙂
I have made these for years and I got the recipe off the back of the butterscotch morsels bag and it called for orange extract The orange and the butterscotch compliment each other so well! I love the touch of molasses too! Thanks!
I added raisins also, and did a bit less oats.
With or without them, this recipe is amazing. Thank you. ❤
So good! I followed recipe exactly. I have made them twice in a week because everyone loved them so much. Thanks Sally.
These were Simply Marvelous!
Followed the recipe down to the T. No problems of how they looked or go flat, nothing. I double the recipe ended up with 50. My cooking time was 11 minutes only because I have a gas oven.
Everyone just LOVED them. Thanks again for the recipe also your chocolate chip have been a BIG hit as well.
Look forward to trying more recipes.
I love all your cookie and muffin and just about all your delicious looking recipes. In process of buying all the products l need for baking. Will let you know as soon as my little fingers will move to accomplish various recipes.
Tish Z
Hi Sally! I have had such wonderful success baking your recipes. I want to make these but would like to bake it in a 9 x 13 pan and cut into bars. Do I still need to chill the dough to bake them in a pan instead of individual cookies? Thank you !!
Hi Lisa – no need to chill the dough to bake as bars! Enjoy!
I’ve been looking for a scotchies recipe and I think this one is it! All the others I’ve tried have just been too crunchy even with less bake time. I’m still waiting for these to cool enough to munch on (and well, they’re for my kid so I have to wait for him… ugh) but they look and feel divine! I did use a smaller scoop and adjusted the bake time down to 10 mins to account for that, but they spread just exactly like the picture showed. Thank you so much for this one!
These are perfect! At high altitude, we can’t be sure how a recipe will work the first time. I typically don’t do the “required” adjustments to the letter, usually just upping the flour as called for if the results are a little saggy. After adding only 1T. extra flour, I decided that since this would be a very stiff dough, I’d skip the tweaks. For a higher yield, I used my medium scoop, which is a skosh less than 2T. Baking a dozen of the cookies as specified worked great. The cookies didn’t spread too much and had nicely plumped edges. Hooray!
Round 2: I used the small cookie scoop, to experiment. Again, perfect! Just drop the baking time down by a couple minutes. The shape was still great, and the centers were still chewy, not overbaked. I took a small bag of them to work and offered, “Cookie?” to my neighbor near COB. Within moments, he had snagged two more dudes, and they raved about them. Finally, he took the last two to other guys, who shouted from Way Over There that my daughter is wrong (not a butterscotch fan, in general *gasp*). Some guy I don’t even know offered that yes, he absolutely loves oatmeal…the texture and chewyness…butterscotch. They emoted that I am “welcome to bring these in, ANYTIME—and five guys say so!” Of course, I gave you credit—DD and I always spread the word. We are on a first-name basis with you.
Fabulous recipe! I’m thinking this would also be good with the cherry chips I have stashed (for Cherry Mash Candy); I can spare a bag now that I know the base is so good.
Just finished my last tray. I refrigerated the dough overnight and did not let it sit out longer than it took to scoop my 3 Tbsp balls. I refrigerated the remaining dough and rotated 2 trays – including putting them in the frig to cool off – between batches. Still, I could tell the dough was getting just a tad softer as I went. My last, and 5th tray, very much spread out and gave me flatter cookies. The other 4 are consistent and nice looking. Perhaps if I would have used the freezer in between batches, but what a surpirse that 4 were basically identical, but not the last. Oh well. I’m bringing these to my daughter’s track team for her birthday so I was trying very hard to keep them identical. I’ll put the flatter ones on the bottom and my guess is that whoever gets these might think they are getting a bigger cookie than others :).
Also, allow them to look pretty raw in the middle – they will firm up perfectly as they cool!
Love these cookies, but plan on keeping that dough hard and getting a little bit of an arm workout (if you are a weakling, like me). Nummy, though!!!!
These were amazing! I had to change the temperature of my oven because the first cookies I baked spread out and were very flat. I used a scoop that was only about 1 to 1 1/2 tbsp, I put them in the refrigerator after I scooped them, for about 15 min, then I baked them at 300 degrees for 15-17 minutes. They are golden brown and not flat at all. Thank you for the recipe, I will definitely make these again.
These were really good! I am never the one to say something is too sweet, but these were borderline too sweet for me. If in doubt, maybe decrease the sugar a bit. But great flavor!
Made these last night, and they are in fact THE BEST. As the recipe says, they look raw when you should pull them out of the oven. They will firm up in 10 mins as they cool. I halved the recipe and got 15 smaller cookies which was more than enough for us.
These cookies are spectacular. Took them to a cookout, and everyone loved them. I do recommend the light brown sugar. I’ve made these three or four times, and the time I used dark brown sugar, we liked them less for some reason.
This is a wonderful base oatmeal cookie recipe! I love adding different things to the dough – raisins, chocolate chips, nuts, etc. I have to add a couple extra tablespoons of flour to mine to prevent too much spreading. They are amazing!
These were sooo tasty. My 16-year-old tasted the dough and called it “ambrosia of the gods” and then about fell over dead when she tried the baked cookies themselves! I followed your recipe exactly and baked on a silicone sheet and they came out perfect, no problems with spreading. Thanks for another great recipe!
Question :). I’ve made these twice now and they are absolutely delicious, the flavor is very unique! Both times I’ve used a scale to measure the ingredients and portioned them our into the exact number of cookies the recipe says it yields. And the ingredients are all fresh. Here’s where my question comes in…both times they’ve come out huge but very flat. First time I chilled them the minimum about of time, second time the full max 4 days and both times have been flat as pancakes. Delicious but flat lol. Any recommendations to fix this? Or are they supposed to be flat? I’d like to try a third time but have them be thicker. Thanks!
Hi Danica, they shouldn’t be flat, how is the flavor and texture? Please check out this blog post to help you troubleshoot: https://sallysbakingaddiction.com/tips-for-cookie-spreading/
I read that you removed 1/4 cup flour from your base oatmeal cookie to get them to spread more (jumped straight to recipe the first time) so I actually just added back in the 1/4 cup flour and they were perfect, easy fix lol. We too prefer the dark brown sugar btw both in these and THE Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe of yours, both recipes are now our go to favorites 🙂
I don’t like big cookies or cookies that spread by design. So, not having the original recipe from your first cookbook mentioned, I noted your admitted revisions and added 1/4 cup flour and 1/4 tsp baking soda. I also scooped about 2 Tbsp worth dough for each cookie and reduced the bake time to 12 minutes at the same temp. Turned out really well! But a bit too dark at the bottom. Next batch will go for 11 minutes. Also: I don’t like my vanilla too pronounced, and halved it to combine with 1 tsp almond extract. It rounded out the molasses and cinnamon very well, too. Great flavors.
Flavor was great, but they ended up pretty flat and dark. They darkened after they came out of the oven (from the molasses?). Can’t figure out why they’re so flat though. I refrigerated the dough overnight and let it soften a bit after I scooped it onto the baking sheets, while the oven preheated. I don’t really have this problem with other cookies and my baking soda is fairly new/fresh. Any suggestions?
Hi Amy! What type of butter are you using? Make sure it’s not over-softened, either. That’s often my mistake when cookies spread too much. Slightly cool is key.
I made a batch of these cookies a few days ago and took them to a friend who had a lot of relatives visiting. Today I went to visit the friend and those relatives said they had gobbled the entire batch of “those incredible cookies with butterscotch”. They all agreed that those were the best cookies they had ever had and wanted more. I just stirred up a batch and the dough is in the ‘fridge.
Thank your for such a great recipe.
Hi, I just made these and I followed the recipe exactly. My butter sat out for a couple of hours. It was still cool, but dented easily. I refrigerated the dough for an hour, and I even put the cookies, once shaped and on the cookie sheet, back in the fridge to stay cool while waiting on the oven. The cookies spread so much. I ended up making the last pan a smaller size cookie, and they didn’t spread as bad. I bake a lot, and this is the only cookie I have this issue with, no matter which recipe I use. Any suggestions would be appreciated!
Hey Patty! And you didn’t change the recipe at all? Baked it just as written? My suggestion would be to add a little more flour next time to strengthen the cookie dough.
These are so good! Just took the last tray out of the oven. Perfectly soft and chewy. Most of them will make it to a work party tomorrow. 😉
Hi Sally,
I have a cooking chemistry question regarding butter. If a recipe calls for room temp butter and the butter used is perhaps a bit more softened than room temp(but not melted) how does that temp affect the spread when the batter ends up being chilled before baking? Doesn’t the chilling sort of zero out the specific consisency of the butter or does some chemical thing happen as the ingredients are incorporated? I chill just about every cookie before I bake and I have often wondered about butter going from chilled to softened back to chilled and then baked.
Thanks for ay insight you can provide.
Hey Nancy! It’s actually more about the creaming process than the chilling. If butter is too soft when you are creaming it with sugar, it won’t produce as much air during the creaming process– which will lead to dense and, often, collapsed cookies.
These sound wonderful I love oatmeal cookies. Could this recipe be baked in a pan for bars? What size pan and for how long?
Hi Cindee! You can turn this cookie recipe into a cookie bar recipe. This cookie dough should fit into a 9×13 inch baking pan or for thicker cookie bars, a 9×9 inch. I’m unsure of the exact bake time though.
Hi Sally,
If I want to add pecans, how much do I add and should I toast them first?
Thanks
Hi Cindy! You can use 1 and 1/2 cups of butterscotch morsels and 1/2 cup of pecans. You can toast them if you’d like, but they’d be great either way! Hope you love these 🙂