The Staple Ingredient That Prevents Oatmeal Cookies From Becoming Cakey

Homemade oatmeal cookies are one of the world's best comfort foods, but it can be a little tricky to nail the texture. Oatmeal has a tendency to soak up a lot of moisture, which can make cookies come out cakey — that is, light and fluffy like a cake instead of dense and chewy like a cookie. One way to make sure your cookie batter has the right moisture level is to add a touch of molasses to the mix. This thick kitchen staple will give the cookies some much-needed moisture to keep the cookies from puffing up too much.

Molasses is a sweet syrup that's created when the juice from sugarcane is boiled down and the sugar crystals are removed. You can get similar results for taming cakey oatmeal cookies by adding corn syrup to the batter, but molasses has rich caramel and toffee flavors that work well with oats. Because of this, molasses brings a complexity to oatmeal cookies that corn syrup simply can't match.

The cure for cakey oatmeal cookies is just a small dose of molasses. Think of Mary Poppins' spoonful of sugar. Too much molasses will overwhelm the flavor and texture of oatmeal cookies. And while molasses cookies are also delicious, they aren't the goal here. A tablespoon or so is all you need to tweak a single-batch cookie recipe, and even less if the batch is scaled down. You could try tweaking your recipe with a teaspoon to start to see the results if you're worried about overdoing it. 

If you're planning on adding molasses, consider scaling down the granulated sugar to balance the sweetness. You could even scale the sugar way down for a more savory oatmeal cookie. If you find that the cookies are still coming out cakey, you can also try pre-soaking the oats.

It's important to choose a mild-flavored molasses so it doesn't overwhelm the taste of the oatmeal. Unsulphured light varieties are best, which can sometimes be labeled as original, regular, or mild. Dark molasses (aka robust, full, or second) has a stronger flavor. While it's not off limits, just keep in mind that darker varieties will give the cookies more of a molasses flavor. Don't use blackstrap molasses which is very dark with a strong, bitter flavor. If you don't have any molasses on hand, you could try mixing brown sugar and maple syrup together for an easy two-ingredient swap.