The Best Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies without Brown Sugar
These oatmeal chocolate chip cookies without brown sugar are seriously yum! Soft and chewy and sweet but not too sweet. You only need simple ingredients you probably have in your pantry and best of all, it’s a super easy recipe 😋
If you are like me, sometimes you want to make a cookie recipe, like these oatmeal chocolate chip cookies and find out you are missing brown sugar. I’m here to show you that you can still make a deliciously moist European café-style oatmeal chocolate chip cookie without brown sugar – and I’ll walk you through exactly how to get that perfect soft and chewy texture while keeping everything really simple.
Table of contents
- Why you will love this recipe:
- Ingredients
- Substitutions
- Equipment
- How to make Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies without Brown Sugar
- Tips for Perfect Soft and Chewy Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Storage
- The Best Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookie without Brown Sugar Recipe
- Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies without Brown Sugar FAQ
- How did I test this recipe?
Why you will love this recipe:
- Sweet but not too sweet – With just half a cup of sugar and no brown sugar, these cookies have a balanced sweetness that lets the other flavors shine through.
- Soft and chewy texture – The combination of butter, egg, and white sugar, (plus that optional touch of molasses/honey if you have any) creates that perfect tender bite with a chewy center. And with this recipe, you don’t have to make a big cookie to get that moist, chewy center.
- Easy-to-find ingredients – Everything in this recipe is a pantry staple – no specialty items or hard-to-source ingredients required. No running out to the grocery store at the last minute!
- Simple to prepare – Just sift, mix and stir 😋
- Versatile – Go ahead and add in nuts, dried fruit or different flavored chocolate chips.
Ingredients
- Plain flour/ all-purpose flour – not self-raising
- White sugar (granulated sugar) – you can use caster sugar and organic sugar as well.
- Butter (salted or unsalted), room temperature (softened but still cool to touch)
- Large egg
- Salt – I use sea salt, but you can use any kind of salt, just know that table salt is more “salty” than sea salt, so use less.
- Vanilla extract – you can use imitation vanilla, but it won’t taste quite as nice.
- Baking soda – make sure it’s not expired, otherwise it won’t, you know, work and you will have a flat cookie!
- Cinnamon – very optional, but I like it. I think it enhances the chocolate flavor.
- Rolled oats (not quick oats and not instant oats) – we are making oatmeal chocolate chip cookies here 😁
- chocolate chips or chunks – I use semi-sweet, but you can use milk chocolate or white chocolate, or you can buy your favorite chocolate and chop it up in chunks.
- Molasses or honey or pure maple syrup – optional. White sugar is basically brown sugar with the molasses taken out. So if you want that slight caramel flavor that classic oatmeal chocolate chip cookies have, then add a bit of molasses back in (or honey or maple syrup, which work kind of the same way). But if you don’t have any, or just want to keep things as simple as possible, don’t worry about the molasses. And this is plain Molasses, not black strap molasses.
- Flaky sea salt (optional, to sprinkle on top)
Substitutions
- Butter – You can use plant-based butter
- Chocolate chips – You can use any flavor, or chop up your favorite chocolate and use the chocolate chunks. This recipe is very easy going!
- White sugar – Granulated, organic, caster, fine sugar, basically any kind of white sugar will work, but make sure you weigh the sugar if you are using anything aside from regular white sugar. This is because you will measure out more sugar, the smaller the sugar crystals are. So weigh it out (or if you are going to guess, take out a tablespoon or two of caster sugar after you measure it out 😉).
- Egg – I have not yet tried a flax egg, but I hope to do this soon, given the price of eggs these days and also, because I am trying to do more plant-based cooking now that I have my plant-based patisserie certificate from the Cordon Bleu 🙃 I’ll keep you posted!
Equipment
- Hand mixer, electric mixer or stand mixer
- Cookie sheetMeasuring cups and spoons
- Medium bowl
- Large bowl
- cookie scoop (optional)
- cooling rack
How to make Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies without Brown Sugar
Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C) and line baking sheets with parchment paper.
Cream the butter and sugar together. You should use butter that is soft, but still cool to the touch, then beat the butter and sugar for 3-4 minutes. The mixture starts looking a bit fluffier and lighter in color. Test by rubbing a small amount between your fingers – you should still feel a tiy bit of sugar.
Don’t overbeat the butter and sugar, because then it sill have the opposite effect – the cookie dough won’t rise as much as if you only beat it for 3-4 minutes. Yes, it’s counterintuitive, I know.
Beat in the egg and vanilla extract until fully incorporated.
In a separate bowl, whisk or sift together flour, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon.
Add dry ingredients to the wet ingredients, mixing until just combined.
Fold in oats and chocolate chips.
Cover dough in plastic wrap and chill in the fridge for at least 30 minutes if you have time. But do not stress if you don’t have time. The cookies will still be delicious 😉
Drop rounded tablespoons of dough onto prepared baking sheets, spacing about 2 inches apart. Use a cookie scoop to get even cookies. You will need to squish them down a bit if you chilled the dough. Add some extra chcolate chips on the top if needed.
Bake for 10-12 minutes until edges are golden brown but centers are still soft.
Allow cookies to cool on baking sheets for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.
This recipe makes about 24 small/medium size cookies (the size of cookies you get in a store-bought packet). If you would like a cafe-sized cookie, you can double the size or even triple the size, but you will need to flatten the dough balls and bake them a couple minutes longer.
If you love chocolate chip cookies like I do, try my chocolate chip cookie without brown sugar recipe or my chocolate chip cookies with pistachios recipe.
Or if you feel too guilty eating a chocolate chip cookie for breakfast 😇, try my raspberry chocolate overnight oats, which really deliver that yummy chocolate and oats flavor or my nut filled chocolate almond bliss balls 😋
Tips for Perfect Soft and Chewy Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Add molasses or honey or maple syrup – Since the recipe doesn’t include brown sugar (which is just white sugar with molasses), adding that teaspoon of molasses, honey or maple syrup will help provide the moisture and caramelization that brown sugar normally contributes, giving you that soft, chewy texture. Honey or maple syrup work too, but molasses will give the most classic flavor.
- Make sure you measure out the flour properly. Use kitchen scale or scoop out the flour from the bag and then level it off with a knife to get the right amount. If you use too much flour, you will not get chewy oatmeal cookies. They will be dry and a bit hard.
- Don’t over-mix the dough – Mix just until ingredients are combined. Overmixing develops gluten, which can make cookies tough rather than tender. Once you add the flour, mix gently and briefly. I use a spatula, which helps me to get the dry ingredients from the bottom of the bowl.
- Slightly underbake the cookies – For soft, chewy cookies, take them out when the edges are set but the centers still look slightly underdone (they’ll continue cooking on the hot baking sheet). This is usually about 9-11 minutes at 350°F depending on size. They should be a very light golden-brown color on the bottom of the cookie.
- Chill the dough – Refrigerate the dough for at least 30 minutes (or up to 24 hours) before baking. This allows the oats to absorb moisture and prevents excessive spreading, which helps maintain a thicker, chewier cookie.
- Use proper cookie size and spacing – This recipe makes 24 smaller-ish cookies. When I weighed the ingredients, and did not overbake, the smaller cookies were still soft and chewy. But if you want them extra chewy, more of a café-style cookie, make the cookies bigger (about 2 tablespoons of dough per cookie) and space them 2 inches apart. Larger cookies tend to have a better chewy center to crisp edge ratio than very small cookies.
Storage
- These cookies keep for about a week if stored in an air tight container. You can freeze the cookies for a couple of months.
- You can also freeze the dough for a couple of months. Make the cookie dough balls and then place them on a tray in your freezer for a couple of hours before storing them in a bag or container, otherwise they will stick together. You can bake straight from frozen, but increase your cooking time by a couple fo minutes. Also, the cookies will not spread as much, so if this is an issue, you may need to partially thaw them and squish them down a bit before baking.
The Best Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookie without Brown Sugar Recipe
Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies Without Brown Sugar
Equipment
- 2 Medium bowls
- whisk or sifter to whisk flour and baking soda
- electric mixer or stand mixer to beat butter and sugar
- Baking sheet
- Parchment paper
Ingredients
- ½ cup unsalted butter, 1 stick or 113 grams, softened to room temperature (softened but still cool to touch)
- ½ cup granulated sugar plain white sugar, 100 grams
- 1 large egg
- 1½ teaspoons vanilla extract
- ¾ cup all-purpose flour 90 grams
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon cinnamon
- 1½ cups rolled oats not quick oats
- ⅞ cup semisweet chocolate chips about ¾ cup plus 2 tablespoons
- 1 teaspoon molasses or honey or pure maple syrup
- flaky sea salt optional, to sprinkle on top
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C) and line baking sheets with parchment paper.
- Cream the butter and sugar together. You should use butter that is soft, but still cool to the touch, then beat the butter and sugar for 3-4 minutes. The mixture starts looking a bit fluffier and lighter in color. Test by rubbing a small amount between your fingers – you should still feel a tiy bit of sugar.
- Beat in the egg and vanilla extract until fully incorporated.
- In a separate bowl, whisk or sift together flour, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon.
- Add dry ingredients to the wet ingredients, mixing until just combined.
- Fold in oats and chocolate chips.
- Cover dough in plastic wrap and chill in the fridge for at least 30 minutes if you have time. But do not stress if you don’t have time. The cookies will still be delicious 😉
- Drop rounded tablespoons of dough onto prepared baking sheets, spacing about 2 inches apart. Use a cookie scoop to get even cookies. You will need to squish them down a bit if you chilled the dough. Add some extra chocolate chips on the top if needed.
- Bake for 10-12 minutes until edges are golden brown but centers are still soft. They should look slightly not quite done.
- Allow cookies to cool on baking sheets for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.
- This recipe makes about 24 small/medium size cookies (the size of cookies you get in a store-bought packet). If you would like a cafe-sized cookie, you can double the size or even triple the size, but you will need to flatten the dough balls and bake them a couple minutes longer.
Nutrition
Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies without Brown Sugar FAQ
How did I test this recipe?
I wanted a chocolate chip oatmeal cookie that was soft and chewy and also not too sickly sweet. Inspired by living in Europe for many years and eating at French cafe’s, I wanted to taste the oatmeal and the chocolate and the underlying vanilla and not have everything swamped by that white sugar taste. Using only white sugar can make cookies have a stronger sugary taste – so I cut back on the amount of white sugar, to give the cookie more of a European taste.
I also wanted to boost the flavor, so I added some molasses, which adds moistness and depth of flavor. You can leave it out, but I find adding just a touch of cinnamon brings out the chocolate flavors. While not completely necessary, a bit of extra vanilla pumps up the flavor.
Finally, I experimented with various baking times. The baking time is really, really, really important. If you over bake this oatmeal chocolate chip cookie made without brown sugar, it will turn out dry. So bake a few cookies as an experiment before you bake a whole sheet full, because every oven is a bit different.
