Healthy Cookies
Thick, chewy oat cookies sweetened mostly with soaked, mashed dates and a little maple syrup, packed with almonds, coconut and raisins. One bowl, 20 minutes in the oven.
Thick oat cookies sweetened with dates, soft in the middle, golden at the edges. One bowl and no mixer.
Recipe inspiration
This is the cookie for the morning you'd skip breakfast: one in your bag, one with coffee. It's for the lunchbox that bans nuts on some days and allows them on others (see the nut-free swap), for the half-box of dates at the back of the pantry, and for anyone who wants a cookie they can eat at 7 am without a sugar crash by 10. Eight big cookies from one bowl, mixed by hand in 10 minutes once the dates have soaked.
About this dish
The oatmeal cookie is American and about 130 years old. Rolled oats were heavily marketed in the 1890s, and Jean Anderson credits the earliest oatmeal cookie recipe to Fannie Farmer's Boston Cooking-School Cook Book of 1896; it had no raisins. Sun-Maid's Souvenir California Raisin Recipe Book of 1915 holds what Stella Parks calls the first oatmeal raisin recipe, and Quaker Oats printed one on its containers from the early 1900s.
The Australian cousin is the Anzac biscuit: rolled oats, desiccated coconut and golden syrup, baked flat and crisp. This cookie shares the oats and coconut and goes the other way: thick and soft, with dates for the syrup.
The dates matter. Medjool, from Tafilalt in Morocco, is "the king of dates": large, soft, with orange-yellow flesh and a caramel-honey flavour. It mashes in seconds after a soak. Firmer dried dates work too; they need the full soak.
What you taste: caramel from the dates, toasted almond and coconut, warm cinnamon, and a burst of raisin. The edges are golden and a little crisp; the middle is soft and chewy, like a flapjack.
Additions & substitutions
- Vegan: a flax egg (1 tbsp ground flaxseed + 3 tbsp water, left 5 minutes) for the egg, and maple syrup, not honey.
- Nut-free: blitz 75 g extra oats into flour for the almond meal, and swap the flaked almonds for sunflower seeds or pepitas.
- Gluten-free: oats labelled gluten-free. Regular oats are often processed alongside wheat.
- Dried fruit: cranberries, chopped apricots or chopped figs for the raisins, gram for gram.
- Chocolate: 60 g dark chocolate chips for half the raisins. Still mostly date-sweet.
- Nuts: chopped walnuts or pecans for the flaked almonds.
- Spice: ½ tsp ground ginger, or the zest of an orange, with the cinnamon.
- Less sweet: cut the maple syrup to 1 tbsp. RecipeTin Eats runs from 1 to 4; 3 is the middle.
Expert tips
Shopping
- Medjool dates if you can, sold loose or in tubs in the fruit section. Packet dates from the baking aisle are drier and cheaper; soak them longer.
- Rolled oats, not quick oats. Quick oats turn to mush and the cookies lose their chew.
- Almond meal (ground almonds) holds the cookies together. Superfine blanched almond flour works too; the meal gives a heartier crumb.
Preparing
- Soak, then mash to a paste. Lumps of date are fine; whole dates aren't. A potato masher is quickest.
- Weigh the oats. A loose cup and a packed cup can be 20 g apart, and that's the difference between soft and dry.
- Wet your hands to shape. The dough is sticky; wet hands slide.
- Shape them as you want them. They don't spread or rise much. A 1.5 cm round goes in; a 1.5 cm cookie comes out.
- Pull them while the middles are soft. They firm up on the tray.
Make ahead, or for a crowd
- Keeps 4 to 5 days airtight. The outsides soften, like any homemade cookie.
- Freeze baked cookies up to 3 months; thaw at room temperature, or 10 seconds in the microwave.
- Freeze the dough shaped and flat on a tray, then bag. Bake from frozen at the same heat, 3 to 4 minutes longer.
- For a crowd: double it, two trays, and swap the trays top to bottom halfway.
Serving suggestions
- With a cup of tea, or a flat white for breakfast.
- Crumbled over Greek yoghurt with berries.
- Beside a smoothie for a grab-and-go breakfast.
- Warm, with a spoon of almond butter on top.
- More bakes without refined sugar: Flourless seed bread.
Healthy Cookies
Published 2 Oct 2026 · Updated 3 Oct 2026
Ingredients
- 100 g pitted dates (about 1 packed cup), roughly chopped
- 85 ml boiling water (⅓ cup)
- 1 egg
- 3 tbsp maple syrup or honey
- 3 tbsp coconut oil, melted (or light olive oil)
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 120 g rolled oats (1¼ cups)
- 75 g almond meal (¾ cup)
- 45 g flaked almonds (½ cup)
- 20 g desiccated coconut (¼ cup)
- 80 g raisins or sultanas (½ cup)
- ½ tsp baking powder
- ½ tsp ground cinnamon
- Pinch of salt
Method
- Heat the oven to 180°C (160°C fan). Line a large baking tray with baking paper.
- Soak the dates: put them in a mixing bowl, pour over the boiling water, cover and leave 10 minutes. Medjools go soft and glossy; firmer dates may need 15.
- Mash with a fork or potato masher into a rough, sticky paste that smells of caramel. A few small lumps are fine.
- Beat in the egg, maple syrup, melted coconut oil and vanilla until smooth and glossy.
- Stir in the oats, almond meal, flaked almonds, coconut, raisins, baking powder, cinnamon and salt until no dry patches remain. It should be thick and sticky enough to hold in a ball. If it's sloppy, rest it 5 minutes so the oats drink.
- Shape 8 portions (a level ⅓ cup each) on the tray, well apart. With wet hands, flatten each into a round about 1.5 cm thick and neaten the edges. They won't spread, so this is the finished shape.
- Bake 18 to 20 minutes, until golden on top and deeper gold at the edges, and the kitchen smells of toasted coconut. The middles still give when pressed.
- Cool 10 minutes on the tray, then move to a wire rack. They firm up as they cool.
Notes
- Dry and hard? Too thin, too small, or baked too long. Next batch, keep them 1.5 cm thick and pull them at 18 minutes. Today, store them with a slice of bread in the tin: they soften overnight.
- Crumbly, falling apart? The dates weren't mashed enough, or the oats were measured heavy. Mash to a paste, and weigh the oats.
- Burnt bottoms, pale tops? Tray too low or too thin. Use the middle shelf, or stack two trays.
- Too wet to shape? Very soft dates or a big egg. Rest the dough 5 minutes, or add a tablespoon of almond meal.
- Not sweet enough? Dates vary. Taste the mashed paste before the egg goes in and add a tablespoon more maple syrup if you want it.
Sources
- "Healthy Oatmeal Breakfast Cookies", RecipeTin Eats (Nagi Maehashi), https://www.recipetineats.com/healthy-oatmeal-breakfast-cookies/
- "Oaty energy cookies", BBC Good Food, https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/oaty-energy-cookies
- "Gluten-free oat & raisin cookies", Jamie Oliver, https://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/fruit/gluten-free-oat-raisin-cookies/
- "Oatmeal raisin cookie", Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oatmeal_raisin_cookie
- "Medjool", Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medjool
- "Anzac biscuit", Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anzac_biscuit
