Soft and Chewy Oatmeal Raisin Cookies - Recipe Diaries (2024)

FAQs

Why are my oatmeal raisin cookies so hard? ›

Overbaking: If you bake your cookies for too long, they can become dry and hard. Make sure to check your cookies frequently as they bake and remove them from the oven when they are just starting to turn golden brown around the edges.

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.

There are several reasons why the cookies may have become dry and crumbly but the two most likely are that either the cookies were baked for too long or too much flour was added to the dough. The cookie should be baked only until the edges are slightly golden and the top looks a little wrinkled.

Use a higher ratio of brown sugar to white sugar. Brown sugar contains molasses, which adds moisture to the cookie dough and helps create a softer texture. Use melted butter instead of room-temperature butter. Melted butter incorporates more easily into the dough, creating a more cohesive and pliable dough.

Raisins: Soak your raisins in warm water for 10 minutes before using (blot very well to dry them) – this makes them nice and plump for your 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.

Baking cookies quickly in a hot oven – at 375 degrees F as opposed to a lower temperature – will make for soft results. They'll bake fast instead of sitting and drying out in the oven's hot air. Ever so slightly underbaking your cookies will give you softer results than cooking them the full amount the recipe says.

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.

How do you keep oatmeal cookies soft? The number one way to keep your cookies soft is to not over-bake them. Over-baked cookies will be dry, hard, and crumbly. Secondly, always store your cookies in an air-tight container.

Eggs bind the ingredients and make for moist, chewy cookies. Adding too many eggs can result in gummy, cake-like cookies.

Should you chill oatmeal cookie dough? ›

Since most cookies are made with softened butter, which is then creamed with the sugar to act as the foundation, it's best to chill the dough after mixing to allow that butter to cool off. “Cookies made from chilled dough expand more slowly as they bake,” Hill says.

Chewy cookies

Sugar dissolved in baking forms a syrup as the dough heats up. Different types of sugars affect the texture because they absorb different amounts of water. Remember moisture is the key! White sugar creates crispier cookies and brown sugar creates chewier cookies.

A lot of cookie recipes use 350°F as the preferred temperature, but if you lower it to 325°F, your cookies will cook a little slower and retain more moisture. Shorten Your Baking Time Another way to keep your cookies chewy and tender is to try baking them for less time.

The ingredients you use and how you shape your cookies both play an important role in whether your cookies turn out crispy or chewy. The type of flour and sugar you use, if your cookie dough contains eggs, and whether you use melted or softened butter all factor into the crispy-chewy equation, too.

The bread/apple trick

Here's a baker's trick you'll find in our new Monster Cookies recipe: Adding a piece of fresh white bread to the storage container will keep cookies from becoming hard or stale.

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.

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.

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!