A Big Little Recipe has the smallest-possible ingredient list and big everything else: flavor, creativity, wow factor. Psst—we don't count water, salt, black pepper, and certain fats (specifically, 1/2 cup or less of olive oil, vegetable oil, and butter), since we're guessing you have those covered. Today, we’re making oatmeal cookies like—snaps fingers—that.
I’m always on the lookout for promising few-ingredient recipes that I can tinker with. Which is how I came across three-ingredient Nutella brownies, where I ditched the baking dish and ended up with fudgy cookies, and two-ingredient hot fudge, where I tried it with unsweetened chocolate and liked that even better, and brown butter tomatoes, where I swapped in juicy raw corn. So it was only a matter of time before I stumbled upon three-ingredient oatmeal cookies.
But really delicious oatmeal cookies in only three ingredients—how is that even possible?
For some perspective, classic oatmeal cookies call for all-purpose flour, brown sugar, granulated sugar, eggs, vanilla extract, baking soda, spices (such as cinnamon and nutmeg), rolled oats, and raisins (or if you’re my husband, chocolate chips, but let’s not fight about that here). Which tallies up at 10 ingredients.
Many three-ingredient oatmeal cookies—there are, by the way, almost five million results for these on Google—keep the oats (either old-fashioned or quick-cooking), but ditch everything else and sub in things like:
- mashed banana and peanut butter
- mashed banana and raisins
- mashed banana and chocolate chips
- maple syrup and peanut butter
The list goes on, but it’s worth noting that there are a lot of the banana–peanut butter recipes. And it’s easy to see why. Bananas add sweetness, peanut butter adds fat, and both are non-dairy and gluten-free, which is appealing to a lot of people. Seems like a winning combo, right?
Not necessarily. Because if you add bananas to a cookie, it will taste like a banana cookie. And if you add peanut butter to a cookie, it will taste like a peanut butter cookie. And if you add both, yeah, you get the idea.
This is less than ideal when what we’re actually after is an oatmeal cookie.
The Big Little solution is simple. To avoid an overtly banana flavor, we’ll say bye to the banana, and return to the signature source of sweetness in classic oatmeal cookies: brown sugar. Its caramel-toffee vibes give these cookies tons of complexity without overshadowing the oats.
When it comes to fat, we’ll swap in something that’s less in-your-face than peanut butter, but still dairy-free: tahini, or toasted, ground sesame seeds. I love using this ingredient as a replacement for butter in chocolate chip cookies (yes, really), thanks to its intense creaminess and subtle nuttiness.
All you have to do is mix the three ingredients in a bowl (a splash of water helps create a cohesive dough), then scoop and bake. No butter-and-sugar creaming. No dough chilling. No fuss.
The result is halfway between a newfangled granola bar and an old-fashioned oatmeal cookie, equal parts wholesome and gratifying, with a crunchy crust and chewy center. And considering that the ingredient list is identical to my morning oatmeal, I happily take this as permission to have two or three and call it breakfast. Coffee for dunking not optional.
| 1 1/2 | cups (149 grams) rolled oats |
| 3/4 | cup (160 grams) packed light brown sugar |
| 1/2 | teaspoon kosher salt |
| 3/4 | cup (188 grams) well-stirred tahini |
| 2 | tablespoons cold water |
| 1 1/2 | cups (149 grams) rolled oats |
| 3/4 | cup (160 grams) packed light brown sugar |
| 1/2 | teaspoon kosher salt |
| 3/4 | cup (188 grams) well-stirred tahini |
| 2 | tablespoons cold water |
Put down those long grocery lists. Inspired by the award-winning column, our Big Little Recipes cookbook is minimalism at its best: few ingredients, tons of flavor.
Order now
Written by: Emma Laperruque
Popular on Food52
39 Comments
Here are a couple recipes that call for coconut cream: https://food52.com/recipes/76879-coconuttiest-coconut-cream-pie and https://food52.com/recipes/49161-coconut-whipped-cream
Unfortunately, Ms. Laperruque did not do the professional thing with this recipe, nor did her editors demand, that she specify the weights of the ingredients as good baking practice calls for. Perhaps next time?
With today's ready available, and inexpensive kitchen scales, this is hardly a burden. It just requires a wee bit of extra effort to record the data, but offers a great boon to others trying to follow as closely as possible more accurate proportions.
The use of a scale also means that all ingredients can be assembled more quickly and simply in one mixing vessel without the need for volumetric measuring cups, spoons, etc. and the need to clean up more stuff. The use of weights makes doubling or tripling a recipe a snap. Also by specifying weight, it doesn't matter whether the brown sugar is firmly packed or not for 165 grams is 165 grams irregardless of the volume it occupies.
So here is what I came up with by looking on-line for the equivalent weights of her volume-based recipe:
1.5 cups rolled oats (~135 g; 569 cals)
0.75 cups tahini (~168 g; 1,006 cals)
0.75 cups tightly packed light brown sugar (~165 g; 621 cals)
2 tbsp water (~29 g; 0 cals)
0.5 tsp salt (~3 g; 0 cals)
Total weight = ~500 grams
Total calories in batter = 2,196 cals
If we assume ~7% weight loss of water in cooking, then the weight of the cookies would be ~465 grams or ~4.7 cals/gram of baked cookie.
Therefore, if you served a cookie weighing say 30 grams (not a big cookie by the way) then you would consume 141 calories and so on. Four 30 gram cookies (120 grams total) would be 564 calories or 28% of a 2,000 calorie/day diet!
As you can see from this analysis, it is not the sugar that is the calorie culprit, it's -- hands down -- the tahini. The calorie contribution from the sugar (621 cals) is only ~9% more than that from the oats (569 cals).
All this having been said, I think this is a very clever recipe. Ms. Laperruque deserves kudos for her creativity and effort in coming up with this minimalist component cookie.
As for other comments on whether 3 ingredients, 5 ingredients, etc., is hair splitting IMHO. From a scientific POV, I would maintain, for instance, that there are actually 6 components. Unspecified, but nevertheless a key component is heat, which must be added to the recipe both in proportion and in time. If you are skeptical and don't believe this, try leaving it out.
Perhaps a better title would have been "These Minimalist Oatmeal Cookies Are Basically Magic."
https://dibruno.com/soom-premium-sesame-tahini/?keyword=&creative=315723492899&gclid=Cj0KCQjwoebsBRCHARIsAC3JP0L-1O9v3jY-vvUd3rAH7zavtaVOKpum4APETQMda4ol0LvUj6ZRMU8aAo_kEALw_wcB
Join The Conversation