We’ve all heard our parents telling their childhood stories of walking miles to school and suffering worse hardships than we ever had to. My mom used to tell me stories like that, but she had a sense of humor, so her stories were always fun to listen to. She used to tell me about her friend’s mother, who would make big, delicious oatmeal cookies. My mom would trade her baloney sandwich nearly every day to get one of those cookies from her friend. She reminisced about those cookies so much, that I set out to make her some when I learned to bake. She and my grandmother would taste test batch after batch of my cookies over the years. I have probably baked enough oatmeal cookies to circle the earth. Okay that’s an exaggeration, but seriously I have baked quite a few. Of all the oatmeal cookies I’ve baked, these are one of my favorites!
Most of the time when you see fruit added to an oatmeal cookie, it’s dried fruit, like raisins or cranberries. That’s mostly because if you just dump fruit into your cookie dough, the fruit releases water, leaving soggy spots in your cookies. To solve that issue, for this recipe, I macerate the blackberries before baking. The purple blackberry juice that’s released from the berries is used to make a beautiful lilac icing to drizzle over the cookies.
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cookies
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- 1/2 cup (4oz or 113g) unsalted butter
- 2 cups (about 8-10 oz or 227-283g) fresh blackberries Cut large berries in half
- 2 tablespoons (25g) granulated sugar
- 3/4 cup (3 oz or 85g) powdered sugar, sifted
- 1 tablespoon heavy cream
- 2-3 tablespoons reserved juice from blackberries
Ingredients
Brown Butter
Macerated Berries
Icing
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- In a small, light colored saucepan, melt 1/2 cup (4 oz or 113g) of butter over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until deep golden and fragrant. Keep a close eye on it. It can go from toasted to burned very quickly. When you see brown particles form, remove from heat and immediately transfer the butter, including the particles, to a small bowl. Refrigerate until solid, about one hour.
- Place the blackberries in a medium-size bowl. Sprinkle with granulated sugar and toss to coat. Let sit for 30 minutes until the berries release their juices.
- Drain the blackberries and reserve the juices.
- Preheat oven to 350ºF (180ºC). Line two large cookie sheets with parchment paper.
- In a separate medium-size bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt and cinnamon. Set aside.
- In a large bowl, beat the brown butter, softened butter and brown sugar until light and fluffy.
- Add the eggs and vanilla extract in three separate additions and beat until well combined.
- Stir in the flour mixture just until combined. Stir in the oats just until combined. Gently fold in the blackberries.
- Scoop 1/4 cup sized portions of dough, about 2 inches apart, onto the prepared cookie sheets. *I used a #16 2-ounce scoop.
- Bake until the cookie tops are set and the edges are golden brown, about 13-15 minutes. Transfer the cookies to a cooling rack to cool completely.
- Pass reserved blackberry juice through a sieve to remove the seeds.
- In a small bowl, whisk together the powdered sugar, heavy cream and one tablespoon of the reserved blackberry juice until smooth. Add more blackberry juice, a little at a time, until the desired consistency is reached. Drizzle the icing over the cooled cookies.
*To find the portion scoop I used, click here.
Love the recipe
Hello and thank you! I appreciate that.
These look delicious!! Have you ever added white chocolate chips?
Hi Claire, I haven’t tried these with white chocolate chips, but it sounds good! Let me know if you do.
Hi Mari-
These look absolutely wonderful, but I’m wondering if you think gluten free all purpose flour could be substituted for the regular flour here. Thank you!
Hi Cynthia,
I haven’t tried these with gluten free flour, but I think a 1-to-1 gluten free flour should work.
This sounds delicious! Can you make this recipe using berries that have been frozen and thawed since you are macerating them anyways?
Hi Toni,
I haven’t tried this recipe with frozen berries, but it should work as long as the berries are well drained.
Would you happen to know the nutritional info of this recipe?
Hi Toni, I typically don’t post nutritional information because there are so many variables when people are home baking. If the recipe is followed exactly as written, the calories are about 221, fat 9g, protein 5g and sodium 128g per serving.
Have you ever used old fashioned oats instead of quick oats in this recipe? Do you think that would be an interchangeable option?
Hi Davina, I haven’t tried this recipe with old fashioned oats. Quick oats are typically used in cookies because of the short baking time. You can certainly use old fashioned oats, but keep in mind that the texture will be different than cookies baked with quick oats. Old fashioned oats will retain a chewier texture.
Hi from England đŸ‡¬đŸ‡§
Firstly, thank you for sharing the weights in grams. It was really helpful for weighing out the ingredients, many recipes I’ve come across call for cups and the weight depending on what’s being measured is so inconsistent with grams.
Secondly, I had to double check the temperature of the oven as mine is electric fan and sometimes temperature is listed for just conventional so I can confirm that the temperature you’ve listed as 180°C is the correct temperature for fan ovens!
I didn’t have enough blackberries so I added in chopped apple the size of choc chips to the fruit mix to total 280g. While they were macerating I did add a little lemon so the apple didn’t go brown.
Nobody prepared me for just how wet and sticky this mix is. I’ve just rolled with it following the recipe on this occasion and sprinkled some oats on the top but I ultimately ended up with all the portions of blobs spread together over two baking trays. So for me, the ¼ cup size scoop of the mix was far too big, despite leaving 2inches around them.
After the 15 minutes baking time, while the cookies were still warm I used my trusty plastic cup from a large coffee chain and placed it over the blobs and swirled around a few times to regain some control over their shape. Once done I ended up with 24 cookies and put them back in the oven for 7 minutes.
Allowing them to cool on the trays for 20 minutes before decorating them with the icing allowing it to set for an hour before transferring them onto the cooling racks.
Used my own icing recipe for drizzle on the 24 cookies:
125g icing sugar
1tsp milk
6tsp blackberry juice
Thoughts on making these again:
1. If adding apples again they turn pink from the blackberry juices and they also have citric acid in them so lemon juice is not required.
2. Possibly incorporate an additional 50g mix of flour and oats to the fruit to make the mix less wet
3. Chill the mix for 10 minutes before adding the fruit.
4. I may use my ice-cream scoop next time for putting the mix evenly onto the trays.
Hi Danielle, thanks so much for sharing your experience with this recipe. Blackberries and apples sound like a delicious combination!
can you freeze the cookies? if so for how long
Hi there! Yes you can freeze the cookies, without the icing, for up to 1 month.