Oat-So-Simple Cookies | Community Recipes | Nigella's Recipes (2024)

FAQs

Why are my homemade oatmeal cookies hard? ›

Overbaking is the most common cause of hard oatmeal cookies. Cookies continue to cook on the baking sheet even after they're removed from the oven, so try taking them out when they're just lightly golden and still a bit soft in the middle. They'll firm up as they cool, resulting in a chewier texture.

You can use quick oats in a pinch, but it will result in a texture difference. In my experience quick oats make for a kind of thicker, denser cookie. They aren't quite as melt in your mouth. And the oats themselves will kind of disappear into the cookie more.

Oatmeal cookies require more moisture to stay soft. Consider adding an extra egg yolk or a touch of milk to your dough to enhance moisture content.

Adding too many eggs can result in gummy, cake-like cookies. Adding too few eggs can result in dry, crumbly cookies.

If you enjoy your cookies soft and chewy, chances are likely the recipe contains a common ingredient that serves a very specific purpose. No, it's not granulated sugar, nor the butter. It's not the egg, all-purpose flour, or even the vanilla extract. The simple, yet oh-so-necessary component is cornstarch.

If quick-cooking oats are used in a recipe in place of old-fashioned rolled oats, the texture will be different, but that will probably matter very little in most recipes. You can also make oat flour, or ground oats, from oats.

When it comes to the two types you probably already have in your kitchen—rolled oats and quick oats—you can use them in recipes interchangeably. If you need quick oats, but only have rolled oats, just pulse the rolled oats a few times in the blender to get the textural effect your recipe needs.

Keep Them Sealed

The key to keeping cookies fresh and soft is to seal them in an airtight container, like a resealable freezer bag. And here's a nifty little trick: add a piece of bread to the bag. You might think that the bread trick works because the cookies absorb moisture from the bread.

Dry – “Dry” or “Crumbly” dough is a product of over-mixing or using too much of any ingredient during the mixing process. This can be reversed by adding one to two tablespoons of liquid (water, milk or softened butter) to your mix.

What happens if you put too much butter in oatmeal cookies? ›

Adding too much butter to your cookies can turn them from delightful treats to crumbly disasters! Here's why: Greasy mess: Extra butter means more fat, making the dough greasy and difficult to handle.

*Sometimes, but not always, the natural chlorophyll in sunflower seeds reacts with baking soda, causing a green color inside the cookies after they cool. This is completely harmless! Depending on the recipe you can reduce baking soda by about one third or a splash of lemon juice may help prevent any “greening”.

Baking hacks: One of the most common baking mishaps is that baking soda often happens to exceed the requisite quantity, leaving a bitter aftertaste.

The easiest way to soften cookies with bread is to place the cookies in an airtight container with a slice of bread and leave them for a few hours. The bread will release moisture and help to rehydrate the cookies, making them soft and chewy once again.

The best way to soften up those hard cookies is something you probably already have in your kitchen… bread! That's right, a piece of fresh bread will make those tough treats soft and chewy.

Just wrap a cookie or two in a damp paper towel and then put them in the microwave for about 10 to 15 seconds. The moisture from the paper towel should soften the cookies right up. So if you wonder how to soften hard cookies quickly? Microwave is the way!

Ever accidentally bake a batch of cookies for too long, only to find that they were crunchy and hard instead of soft and chewy? The opposite goes for under-baking. Pull your cookies out of the oven a minute or two early (while the centers are still gooey).