Nostalgia never tasted so sweet! These old-fashioned oatmeal iced cookies are filled with warm spices & taste even better than the original that we grew up eating. Recipe very lightly adapted from Sally’s Baking Addiction.
This past weekend, I checked an unexpected item off my bucket list: I got to go to the one, the only…Super Bowl!
With an LA Rams victory on the horizon and high spirits flying all around, celebratory tailgates cookies were (of course!) the order of the day in our household. We decided to whip up a batch of these Old-Fashioned Iced Oatmeal Cookies, which–apart from being every bit as good as the Mother’s Iced Oatmeal Cookies we ate growing up–are incredibly sturdy and can withstand all sorts of abuse even when crammed into a backpack for a 16-hour day at SoFi Stadium.
And boy, what a day it was! On 2:30am on Sunday, I flopped my way out of bed with all the grace of a two-ton elephant seal and somehow managed to stuff my cookies into my backpack, before crawling into the car with a pillow by my head and Wallflour Boy graciously at the wheel. Two hours later, I’d cleared about fifteen levels of check-in and security before finally stepping into a concessions kitchen filled with the glorious smell of deep frying.
You never know how unimaginably pertinacious the smell of chicken grease can be until you’ve spent half a day standing in a room filled with it. For the next ten hours, we prepped salsa, filled soda, and prayed to the customer service gods that we would pour the next beer with less than 30% foam. We cheered over our first successfully-delivered orders, broke into spontaneous song when Eminem came on at the halftime show, and wondered aloud whether we would ever find games like Diner Dash fun again.
With 24 volunteers in our group manning the booth, it was well past 7pm before we finally wiped our grease-beaten brows and trudged out of the kitchen, tired but cheering happily at our last-minute LA Rams victory.
And through it all were these cookies! Like store-bought Mother’s Iced Oatmeal Cookies, these Old-Fashioned Iced Oatmeal Cookies are exceptionally hardy and perfect for stacking, snacking, gifting, and on-the-go face-stuffing. By the third quarter of the game, I’d plowed through seven of these, which had the perfect combination of chunky oat texture and spice-filled cookie to keep me chugging in a state of sugar-induced adrenaline.
So whether you’re celebrating a Rams win, consoling yourself over a Bengals defeat, or just on the lookout for a really, really can’t-be-beat classic iced oatmeal cookie recipe, game time is on. Go make these now–hut, hut, hike!
Old-Fashioned Iced Oatmeal Cookies
Nostalgia never tasted so sweet! These old-fashioned oatmeal iced cookies are filled with warm spices & taste even better than the original that we grew up eating. Recipe very lightly adapted from Sally's Baking Addiction.
Ingredients
For the cookies:
- 2 cups old-fashioned whole oats*
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
- 1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
- 1 cup packed brown sugar
- 1/2 cup white sugar
- 2 eggs, room temperature
- 1 tablespoon dark molasses
- 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
For the icing:
- 1 1/2 cups sifted powdered sugar
- 1/4 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- 1 1/2 tablespoons milk or soy milk
Instructions
To make cookies:
- In a food processor, lightly pulse oats about 10-12 times, until chopped oats have a good variety of texture (i.e. both big and smaller oat flakes).
- In a medium bowl, mix together pulsed oats, flour, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon. Set aside.
- In a large mixing bowl, cream together butter and both sugars until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Beat in eggs, molasses, and vanilla extract.
- Fold dry ingredients into wet mixture until just combined. Your mixture will be thick and sticky--this is perfect! Cover dough and refrigerate for at least 1 hour.**
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Lightly grease baking sheet.
- Using a medium cookie dough scoop, place balls of dough (about 1-inch diameter) 2 inches apart on prepared cookie sheet. Bake in preheated oven for 10-12 minutes, until edges turn lightly golden. Allow cookies to sit on sheet for an additional 5 minutes, then transfer to wire rack and cool completely.
To make icing:
- Whisk together all ingredients in a small bowl as best as you can. If needed, add an extra half tablespoon of milk to facilitate whisking, but only add as much as absolutely necessary. (Note that this will be an extremely thick icing, which is perfect!)
- Dip tops of cooled cookies quickly into icing, allowing any excess to drip off back into bowl. Icing will set after about an hour or so.
Notes
*I have also used quick-cooking oats in a pinch and they work well as a substitute.
**Per Sally's notes, you can also refrigerate this dough for up to 4 days. Just make sure you allow dough to sit for 30 minutes at room temperature before scooping since dough will be very hard.
