High Altitude Oatmeal Cookies

These High Altitude Oatmeal Cookies are soft and chewy and perfectly spiced. Add in your favorite mix ins and satisfy those oatmeal cookie cravings!

You’ll love all the textures in these High Altitude Oatmeal Cookies! They're rich and buttery with lots of spice flavor. They’re just one of those classic cookies everyone will love and there are endless topping choices. My favorite add-in are butterscotch chips, but these cookies work with normal chocolate chips, raisins, peanut butter chips or even white chocolate chip, orange zest and dried cranberries for the holidays. These cookies are the best warm from the oven with a glass of cold milk!

If you love cookies, you have to try some of my other high altitude cookies recipes! I have all sorts of recipes including classic chocolate chip, funfetti, peanut butter, just to name a few.

Why You'll Love this Recipe

• These cookies are full of spice and butterscotch (or topping of your choice)
• Easily customizable based on your favorite oatmeal cookies
• Thick, chewy cookies with soft centers and slightly crisp edges
• This recipe is easy and straight forward! Chilling is completely optional for an even softer and more melt in the mouth cookies

Ingredients

Ingredient Notes

• Unsalted Butter: I use unsalted so we can control the amount of salt. The butter adds richness and results in a delicious buttery cookie.
• Sugar: I use dark brown and granulated sugar to give us just the right amount of sweetness and chewiness. I like dark brown sugar for its robust taste and it also reacts with the baking soda.
• Egg: A whole egg to bind the cookie dough, add moisture, and adds richness. 
• Flour: I always use all-purpose flour. Just make sure to measure the flour correctly.
• Old Fashioned Oats: Don't use quick oats as the texture won't be the same.
• Salt: I prefer to use kosher or fine sea salt in my recipes.
• Cinnamon: If you’d like additional spice flavor add in ¼ teaspoon nutmeg, ground ginger and ground clove too.
• Vanilla Extract: I recommend using a nice vanilla extract. You can also use vanilla bean paste. 
• Baking Soda: it's our only leavening agent in these cookies. It reacts with the acidic molasses in the dark brown sugar. Which can result in a higher rise than using a light brown sugar.
• Butterscotch Chips: has a delicious deep caramel like flavor. Can be swapped out for chocolate chips, peanut butter chips, M&Ms, Heath bar bits, raisins, craisins, nuts, just about anything!

Step-by-Step Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. In a large mixing bowl, beat room temperature butter, both sugars and ground cinnamon until completely creamed together ~ 2-3 minutes on low - low medium speed.
2. Add in the egg and vanilla extract, beat until combined together.

3. Add in kosher salt, baking soda, all purpose flour, cinnamon and old fashioned eats.. Mix by hand using a silicone spatula. It's okay if there are a few streaks of flour.
4. Add in butterscotch chips and use a silicone spatula to fold the butterscotch chips (or mix-in of your choice) into the batter until they are evenly distributed in the batter.

5. Scoop cookie dough using a 2.8 Tbsp/ 1.4 oz tablespoon scoop (medium/red scoop) onto a silicone mat lined on a baking sheet. Leave about an 3-4 inches between each cookie.
6. Optionally, you can scoop dough onto a lined tray, cover with plastic wrap and rest in the fridge for up to a day.

7. Bake for 12-13 minutes in a pre-heated oven until edges are a golden brown (add a minute or a few minutes if use refrigerated or frozen dough). Cool cookies on a baking sheet for 5 minutes.
8. Enjoy cookies warm or move the cookies to a cooling rack to cool using a spatula until room temperature.

Variations

There are so many ways to switch up this simple High Altitude Oatmeal Cookie recipe! It really depends on what you like the most, season, etc. If you're not a fan of butterscotch chips, try some of these variations:

• peanut butter chips + ground ginger + ground clove + ground cinnamon + ground nutmeg
• white chocolate chips + dried cranberries + orange zest

Or just replace butterscotch chips with any of these add-ins: raisins, dried cherries, chocolate chips, m&ms, etc.

Expert Tips

• Don't Overbake The Cookies! Take the cookies out of the oven when the edges are lightly golden at the bottom, the center might look undercooked but the cookies will firm up while they’re resting on the cookie sheet. Baking the cookies until centers are golden will result in a hard crispy cookie.
• Properly Measure Flour: If you just dip your measuring cup into a bag of flour, chances are you have way too much flour due to packing. I keep a small digital scale to accurately measure flour BUT you can also you the spoon and level method too if you don't have a scale. To do this, use a spoon to fluff up the flour within your flour bag or container. Then use a spoon to scoop the flour into the measuring cup and finally us the straight edge of a knife to level the flour across the measuring cup.
• Room Temp Ingredients are Key: room temperature eggs and butter form an emulsion and traps air and blend/combine together very easily since they are warmer creating a seamless batter. Cold ingredients don't incorporate together easily and can result in dense puffy cookies and also seize up the batter.
• Carefully transfer cookies! Use a cookie spatula to transfer the cookies from the baking sheet to the cooling rack. They will still be very soft and can break easily!

Recipe FAQs

Storage

Store cookies in an airtight container at room temperature for a few days.

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