High Altitude Oatmeal Butterscotch Cookies (Oatmeal Scotchies)
An easy, high altitude recipe for soft and chewy oatmeal butterscotch cookies, made with brown butter, nutty pecans, sweet butterscotch chips and a hint of cardamom and cinnamon.
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
- 1 cup unsalted butter
- ⅔ cup granulated sugar
- ⅔ cup light brown sugar, lightly packed
- 2 tsp butterscotch syrup (see notes for substitutions)
- 2 large eggs
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 2 cups all-purpose flour, spooned and leveled
- 2 cups old-fashioned oats
- 1 ½ tsp coarse Kosher salt (if using table salt, use half the amount)
- 1 tsp baking soda
- ¼ tsp ground cardamom
- ¼ tsp ground cinnamon
- ½ cup pecans, chopped
- 1 cup butterscotch chips
- ¼ tsp flaky finishing salt (optional)
Instructions
- In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat. Continue to cook the butter for about 4-5 minutes, swirling occasionally to see the bottom of the pan, until the butter is very fragrant, and nutty, golden brown solids have formed on the bottom of the pan.Pour the brown butter, scraping up all of the browned bits, too, into a medium-sized mixing bowl, and let cool at room temperature for 30 minutes.
- After cooling the brown butter, add the granulated sugar and brown sugar, and whisk vigorously for 1 minute.
- Add the butterscotch syrup, eggs and vanilla extract, and whisk vigorously for 1 minute, until lightened in color.
- Separately, whisk together the flour, oats, salt, baking soda, cardamom and cinnamon. Add the flour mixture and the chopped pecans to the butter mixture, use a spoon to stir everything together until moistened, then stir in the butterscotch chips.
- Divide the dough into 20 portions using a cupcake or ice cream scoop with a release lever. Roll the dough into balls, and flatten the balls slightly with the palm of your hand. Cover with plastic wrap and chill the dough balls in the refrigerator for 20 minutes.
- While the dough is chilling, preheat the oven to 350 F, and position a rack in the center of your oven. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper or baking paper.
- Place the chilled dough 3 inches apart on the baking sheet (keeping the remainder of the dough in the refrigerator while you bake the first batch). Bake the cookies for about 9 1/2 - 10 minutes. They should appear set around the edges, underdone in the middle, and very pale. Do not over bake, or they will end up dry.TIP: For perfectly round cookies, immediately after taking the pan out of the oven, use a round cookie cutter that's larger than the circumference of the baked cookies, and "scoot" it around the hot cookies. This pulls in the uneven edges and makes beautifully round cookies. You have to do this quickly, before the cookie sets.
- Cool the cookies for 5 minutes on the baking sheet, then transfer to a cooling rack to cool and set completely. If you like, decorate the tops of the hot cookies with a few extra butterscotch chips, and a sprinkling of flaky finishing salt, such as Maldon.
Notes
- Leftover cookies should be stored in an airtight container for 2-3 days. Since oats are very absorbent, oatmeal cookies tend to dry out faster than other cookies, but a slice of plain sandwich bread in a cookie jar does wonders to keep them soft for days.
- The cookies can also be wrapped well and frozen for 3-6 months.
- If you don't have butterscotch syrup, you can use golden syrup (light treacle syrup), light corn syrup or light molasses instead.
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