Call me crazy, but more often than not, I’ll choose oatmeal cookies over chocolate chip. I almost don’t want to admit that as I’m a chocolate lover. I don’t know what it is about oatmeal cookies, but I just love them. It might be because my mom made oatmeal cookies often, and it reminds me of being a kid.
I’ve had this recipe on my to-do list for a while, and it was finally time to make it. I love making healthy Starbucks copycats, so naturally, this was the next one on the list. In case you’re wondering, I’ve done a lot of healthy copycat Starbucks recipes, including: Pumpkin Scones, Lemon Loaf, Gingerbread Loaf, Cranberry Bliss Bars and Oat Fudge Bars
These Outrageous Oatmeal Cookies {Healthier Starbucks Copycat} are a pretty good ringer for the real deal version. Sure they aren’t going to be exact, as my version don’t contain nearly the same amount of fat and sugar. The Starbucks version have 15 g of fat, 29 g of sugar and 52 g of carbs per cookie. Yikes! My version still has great flavor, and are simply a very tasty oatmeal cookie. What makes them outrageous? Well because they contain 2 types of raisins (regular and golden raisins), as well as dried cranberries!
I used a combination of rolled oats and gluten-free all purpose flour in these. I don’t recommend using oat flour as all oat cookies tend to taste a little too heavy to me. I liked the combo of the rolled oats and the flour. If you’re not gluten free, I recommend using all-purpose flour or a lighter whole wheat flour like whole wheat pastry flour. Stone ground whole wheat flour may turn these cookies into little pucks…probably not what you want.
Another ingredient I used in these and like the result is the new Truvia Brown Sugar. It does contain a bit of sugar and molasses, but it also contains stevia and erythritol which keep the calories lower than a traditional brown sugar. If you haven’t tried it yet, I’d recommend it. I only used 1/2 cup in this recipe and it sweetened it perfectly. I find with alternative natural sweeteners like these you don’t need to use as much to get the level of sweetness you want. Of course, there are other options if you prefer, but for these I wouldn’t recommend using strait stevia as it tends not to work as well in cookies so I’ll usually mix with something else. I believe its because stevia doesn’t caramelize like regular sugar. Strangely there is science involved with certain ingredients.
I found these cookies stored great at room temperature in a sealed container, but I’m sure they would also freeze well.
I hope you give them a try really soon!
- 1½ cups old fashioned oats
- ½ cup gluten-free all purpose flour (if not gf, use all purpose or whole wheat pastry flour)
- 3 Tbsp raisins
- 3 Tbsp dried cranberries
- 3 Tbsp golden raisins
- ¼ tsp baking soda
- ½ tsp salt
- ½ tsp cinnamon
- 4 Tbsp butter, room temp (use coconut oil or vegan margarine for dairy-free)
- 2 Tbsp unsweetened applesauce
- ½ cup Truvia Brown Sugar (or coconut palm sugar, or your favorite dry sweetener)
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 1 egg
- Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F.
- In a smaller bowl, beat together the softened butter, truvia brown sugar until fluffy. Add in the egg, vanilla and applesauce.
- In a larger bowl, mix together the dry ingredients (oats, flour, raisins, cranberries, baking soda, salt, cinnamon).
- Add the wet ingredients to the dry, mixing until blended and forms a nice dough.
- Drop by spoonful onto a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. I used a cookie scoop. Flatten each cookie with a fork.
- Bake for 14 minutes until they start to go golden around the edges.