High Altitude Old Fashioned Iced Oatmeal Cookies
An easy high altitude recipe for old fashioned iced oatmeal cookies. The cookies are so soft and chewy, slightly spicy with a hint of molasses, and dipped in sweet vanilla glaze.
All recipes on Curly Girl Kitchen are developed for high altitude at 5,280 feet. See FAQs for adjusting to higher or lower elevations.
Ingredients
Cookies
- 1 cup unsalted butter
- ⅔ cup granulated sugar
- ⅔ cup light brown sugar, lightly packed
- 2 large eggs
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 2 tsp molasses (Grandma's old fashioned)
- 2 cups old-fashioned (rolled) oats
- 2 cups all-purpose flour, fluffed, spooned and leveled
- 1 ½ tsp coarse Kosher salt (if using table salt, use half the amount)
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp ground cinnamon
- ¼ tsp ground nutmeg
Icing
- 1 ½ cups powdered sugar
- ½ tbsp meringue powder
- ½ tsp vanilla extract
- 3 ½ tbsp whole milk
Instructions
Cookies
- Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Continue to cook the butter, swirling the pan occasionally, for about 5-10 minutes, until nutty, light golden brown solids form at the bottom of the pan and the butter is very fragrant.Pour the browned butter into a large bowl, and let cool for 30 minutes at room temperature.
- Add the granulated sugar and the brown sugar to the butter, and whisk vigorously by hand for 1 minute.
- Add the eggs, vanilla and molasses, and whisk vigorously for 1 minute, until lightened in color.
- With a small food processor or Ninja, pulse the oats until they are finely ground. In a bowl, combine the ground oats with the flour, salt, baking soda, cinnamon and nutmeg.
- Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients, and stir together into a dough.
- Use a medium-sized cookie scoop with a release lever (about 1 1/2 tablespoons) to scoop the dough into 36 portions, dropping the dough balls onto a baking sheet lined with wax paper or parchment paper.Don't roll the dough balls smooth with your hands - you want the surface to be a little rough and craggy. Just ever so slightly flatten the tops of the dough balls with your hand.Cover the dough with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for 35 minutes.
- Preheat the oven to 350 F, and position a rack in the center of the oven. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.
- Place the chilled dough balls 3 inches apart on the baking sheet (refrigerating the rest of the dough balls until ready to bake them). Bake the cookies for 9 minutes, just until barely set in the middle.
- When you take the pan out of the oven, use a round cookie cutter (one that's larger than the circumference of the baked cookies), and immediately "scoot" it around the hot cookies. This pulls in any uneven edges to make perfectly round and beautiful cookies.Cool the cookies on the baking sheet for 2-3 minutes, then transfer to a cooling rack.Continue baking the rest of the cookies, and let them cool completely before icing.
Icing
- In a shallow bowl, combine the powdered sugar and meringue powder. Add the vanilla and milk, and whisk gently until smooth, thick and drizzly.
- To dip the cookies, turn a cookie over so that the top is facing down. Holding the cookie by the edges, lightly dip it in the icing, shake off the excess, and set on a baking sheet. Repeat with all the cookies.Note: You don't want to fully submerge the top of the cookies in the icing. Just lightly dip them so that the rough bumps and ridges on top of the cookies catch the icing, with plenty of gaps in between. This is the classic look of an old fashioned iced oatmeal cookie.
- The icing will set and dry to the touch within a few minutes, and will stay a little soft underneath. Let dry for about an hour before storing the cookies in an airtight container. Separate each layer of cookies with wax paper, so that the top cookies don't stick to the icing underneath.
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