This Oatmeal Craisin cookies recipe is the ultimate soft and chewy cookie treat to make over the holidays and beyond! Making these healthy oatmeal cranberry cookies is super easy, yet provides a luxurious cookie experience loaded with craisin, cinnamon, and brown sugar making the cookies wonderfully rich yet very well balanced in sweetness.
These Craisin cookies are chewy on the outside and gooey on the inside, a must-try over the holidays and beyond! Hands down best oatmeal craisin cookies!

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🌟 Why this is the best recipe
- Perfect chewy texture – Chewy oatmeal cranberry cookies with the most perfect texture. My top 3 secrets behind chewy cookies are 1. resting the cookie dough before baking 2. using a good mix of flour and oatmeal 3. not over-bake them
- Irresistible fudge center – There is nothing worse than over-baked cookies with a dry, crumbly texture! I suggest rather under-bake the craisin cookies than over-bake them.
- Super delicious – In these healthy Craisin cookies the combination of oatmeal and cranberries with a hint of cinnamon & sea salt will blow your mind! It will be your family favorite during the holidays and beyond!
- Quick & Easy to make - Last but not least, it is hard to find a more delicious recipe with so minimal effort. Even if you are a beginner in the kitchen, you can comfortably try this from-scratch Oatmeal Craisin cookie recipe, all you need is my recipe and an oven
📝 Ingredient notes
- Butter: Use always unsalted as you want to be in control of the quantity of the salt. I am using 82% fat content butter in all my recipes. In this recipe, the butter needs on room temperature, so soft enough to be able to cream with the rest of the ingredients. Avoid last-minute microwaving as liquid butter can´t be creamed and would not properly emulsify with the rest of the ingredients
- Granulated & Brown Sugar: Granulated sugar only can work too, however dark or light brown sugar gives beautiful molasses flavor to the Oatmeal Craisin cookies. If you want to learn about the different types of sugar and how to use them in baking, please read my sugar guide
- Egg: Room temperature as always
- Flour: Simple all-purpose flour works well in this recipe. If you want to be a Pro when it comes to deciding what type of flour to use in your baking, please read my flour guide
- Salt: An essential ingredient in most dessert recipes. Balances flavor and enhances other ingredients, do not leave it out
- Oatmeal: Use old fashioned oats (rolled) for this Oatmeal cookie recipe.
- Baking soda: Half a teaspoon of baking soda helps to make your Craisin Oatmeal cookies tender and chewy and gives some rise to them
- Cinnamon: There is just a slight cinnamon aftertaste on these cookies but it makes a huge difference and emphasizes the rest of the ingredients
- Craisin: Craisins - or dried cranberries - is the Queen of this recipe!
- White Chocolate chips (optional): You can load these cookies with half a cup of chocolate chips and turn them into Craisin chocolate chip cookies
🛒 You’ll find detailed measurements for all Ingredients in the printable version of the Recipe Card at the bottom of this post
👩🍳 How to make this recipe
1. Step-by-step process
Making this Holiday Oatmeal Cookie recipe is extremely easy and quick but there are a couple of key steps you have to get right to achieve the best texture.
- With an Electric hand mixer cream together at room temperature soft butter, granulated and light brown sugar for a few minutes
- Mix in the egg, just until combined
- Sift&Mix separately the dry ingredients; flour, salt, oatmeal, baking soda, and cinnamon
- Add the flour mixture into the butter mixture and fold with the help of a rubber spatula just until combined. Make sure you fold it only until the mixture comes together, literally 30 seconds. Do not use a mixer and do not over mix the cookie batter. Over mixing ingredients would result in incorporating too much air and gluten into the mixture in which case the cookies might get a crumbly, cake-like texture and we do not want that!
- Finally, fold in the dried cranberries. Leave some cranberries left to place on top of the cookies just before baking
- Line a tray with parchment paper and place 9 cookie dough balls onto the baking sheet
- Press more cranberries on the surface of the cookie dough balls
- Now comes the chilling time. See details below
💡 Top Tip: Use a Digital scale to divide the cookie batter into 9 equal cookie balls. It helps it achieve equal-sized Oatmeal Cranberry cookies
2. Why chill cookie dough before baking
You will have to chill the cookie dough for at least 1 hour before baking, and the main reason behind it is to avoid over-spread, sad-looking, flat Oatmeal Craisin cookies.
You might come across "no chill cookie dough" on the Internet, I can almost guarantee that the dry vs wet ingredients are unbalanced in any "no chill cookie" meaning when they are baked, they will be dry. The warmer the dough, the easier it will spread in the oven and our aim is to achieve thick, fudge cookies.
💡 Top Tip: If you don’t have an hour to wait, try to chill the cookies for 15min in the freezer instead
3. How to bake these chewy oatmeal craisin cookies
Baking the Oatmeal Craisin cookie is a super delicate matter, one of the most important parts of any homemade Cookie recipe!
First of all, never bake any dessert without properly pre-heating your oven first, so start with that. The cookies will be baked at 175 C / 347°F (no fan) so preheat the oven +20C / 68F as the oven temp drops when you open the door. Always use Digital oven thermometer to avoid over-baked crumbly or under-baked cookies.
I bake these cookies in the following way: 10 minutes at 175 C / 347°F (no fan). After 10 minutes the cookies should already somewhat spread, take the tray out and place even more craisins on top. It is also the perfect moment to slightly shape the cookies and make them perfectly round, see tips further below in the next section. After, bake them for another 3 minutes at again 175 C / 347°F. Please note that each oven is different so you might need to adjust the times slightly to your oven.
The cookies are ready when the edge looks sort of baked and the middle slightly gooey but not raw. Do not ove-bake your cookies! Leave the cookies in the baking pan while they are still hot as they will further set as they cool. Move them to a wire cooling rack when they are already partly set, like 5 minutes after they are out of the oven, then let them cool on the rack.
The baked cookies are best eaten fresh. Any leftovers can be stored the cookies in an air-tight jar for a few days, I recommend that you warm them up in the microwave before serving.
💡 Top Tip: After baking, sprinkle the cookies with some sea salt. Salt helps to balance the flavors and enhance the rest of the ingredients
🎓 Expert tips
- Always work with a cookie dough that is cold enough to be able to handle so it does not stick. If needed, pop the dough back into the fridge for a few minutes, then shape them
- Feel free to use brown sugar only, for an even more molasses flavor (although the color of the cookie will get darker)
- Cranberries can easily be substituted in this recipe with other berries, eg. dried blueberries, raisins, or raspberries
- I get the best results when baking these cookies on parchment paper or a perforated baking mat. I find they might get wet from the bottom if baked on a silicone mat
- Avoid over-baking your cookies as that would result in a crumbly texture
- Feel free to add white chocolate chips into the dough and turn these cookies into Oatmeal craisin white chocolate cookies!
- I just love baking with oats, if you like oatmeal like me, why not also try baking these Chocolate Peanut Butter Oatmeal Bars from Sula and Spice, Bircher overnight oats breakfast from Suzy, or this Chocolate oatmeal no bake cookies from Lisa?
❓Recipe FAQs
Yes, you can, however, you will need to adjust the ingredient quantities accordingly.
Most probably yes, you can, however, you can´t just leave out / change one ingredient without reformulating the entire recipe. When one ingredient changes, some other ingredients need to be changed too in order to keep the balance in the texture and flavor. Sadly, I am not able to provide substitutes for all sorts of allergies and diets.
There are a couple of issues that might have happened.
You most probably over-baked your cookies, either because of incorrect oven temperature (higher than stated in the recipe) or simply because you baked the cookies for too long. Make sure you invest in an inexpensive oven thermometer as suggested above.
Another issue that can cause too dry texture as opposed to fudge texture is measuring the ingredients incorrectly, eg. adding too much flour, or measuring the fat incorrectly, eg. too little butter. Make sure you use a Digital scale for measuring the ingredients. Over mixing the ingredients can also cause cakey texture on cookies. You have to incorporate the dry ingredients with a rubber spatula and don´t use the mixer at this point.
There are a couple of issues that might have happened.
You have to chill the cookie dough before baking as indicated in the recipe. Apart from skipping the chilling time perhaps your oven is too hot or you measured the ingredients incorrectly. Consider using Digital oven thermometer and Digital scale.
Feel free to substitute craisin with other dried fruit eg. you can turn this recipe into wonderful oatmeal raisin cookies, or you can use pecans, white chocolate chips, etc.
Once the Cookies are baked, serve them fresh. Any leftover can be stored in an air-tight container either at room temperature or in the fridge for 3-4 days. I suggest you cover the cookies, so it does not absorb any smell from the fridge or from the kitchen.
Technically you can freeze these cookies before baking them in an airtight container. They also freeze well after they are baked, however, the fudge texture might change slightly.
🍪 More Cookie recipes
EASY Oatmeal Craisin Cookies
Equipment
- Digital scale
Ingredients
- 130 g (½ cups) Unsalted butter soft, room temperature
- 70 (⅓ cups) Brown sugar light brown sugar or dark brown sugar
- 40 g (⅕ cups) Granulated sugar
- 1 Egg room temperature
- 120 g (1 cups) All purpose flour
- 120 g (½ cups) Oatmeal Old Fashioned Rolled Oats
- ½ Teaspoon Salt
- ½ Teaspoon Baking soda
- ½ Teaspoon Cinnamon ground cinnamon
- 150 g (1⅓ cups) Craisin dried cranberry
US customary cup measurement is an indicative figure only. Measure the ingredients with a digital scale by weight (gram). Baking is art but also science which requires precision and accuracy.
Instructions
- Mix in room temperature egg, just until combined
- Mix oatmeal, flour, salt, baking soda and cinnamon together then add this flour mixture into the cookie dough and fold with the help of a Rubber spatula just until combined. Do not overmix
- Fold in dried cranberries. Leave some cranberries to press onto the cookies at later stage
- Prepare baking pan with baking sheet
- Divide the dough into 9 equal balls (using a Digital scale is handy) and place them onto the parchment paper leaving enough space between them to spread
- Press some more craisins on the surface of the cookies
- Let cookie dough rest in the fridge for an hour
- Pre-heat oven to 175 C / 347°F
- After 1h chilling time, bake the cookies for 10 minutes in the following way: Bake for 10 minutes then place more craisins on top, then bake them for further 3 minutes.
- For the perfect round cookie, apply circular movement around the freshly baked cookies with the help of a cookie cutter
- Let the cookies rest for a few minutes, then carefully remove from the parchment paper and let them cool on a Cooling rack
- Serve them while they are warm but not hot
- The Cookies will further set as they cool. Keep them on room temp for a few days in air tight jar
Notes
- Use always unsalted butter in dessert recipes, in the meantime make sure you add the salt stated in the recipe as that will balance the sweetness
- Use combination of white and (light or dark) brown sugar for the best texture and beautiful butterscotch flavor
- Egg should be used on room temp
- Use old fashioned oats (rolled)
- Craisin (dried cranberries) will provide sweet & juicy flavor. Alternatively, you can replace it with raisin
- Digital scale is required for consistent, happy baking experience:)
- Dry ingredients should be carefully folded into the wet ingredients without over mixing the cookie dough
- Leave some craisin for later use to top the cookie dough before baking, then again just before it is ready baked
- Make sure you let the cookie dough rest in the fridge for min. 1 hour to avoid pancake like flat cookies
- Always pre-heat your oven and consider using a digital oven thermometer for the best results
- Each oven is different so you might need to adjust the baking time slightly but in my oven I bake the brownie blondies for exactly 13 minutes. It is ready when the edge looks sort of baked, and the middle slightly gooey but not raw.
- For the best fudge cookie experience consider rather slightly under bake your dessert
Julia
It’s really the best recipe I have ever tried! Easy cooking, fast eating 😄