3-Ingredient Oatmeal Cookies

Author Notes

Search for “Three-Ingredient Oatmeal Cookies” on the internet and you’ll get millions of results. The problem is, a lot of these recipes don’t quite taste like the classic oatmeal cookies we know and love, with crispy edges, chewy centers, and buttery, sugary flavor. In this Big Little Recipe, we call in brown sugar and tahini, which give these cookies an A+ chewy texture and buttery, nutty flavor. All you have to do is combine the three ingredients in a bowl—plus, a little water, which helps create a cohesive dough—then scoop, smush, and bake. By smush, I mean, use your palm to gently flatten each dough blob into a 2-inch disc; the cookies don’t spread on their own in the oven, so this gives them an encouraging head start. Note: Because brown sugar can be stubbornly lumpy, I like to rub it and the oats together between my hands before adding the tahini and water. Make sure to not overbake these cookies, since they’ll crisp significantly as they cool. Whenever I’m making a new cookie recipe, if I have the time, I like to bake one cookie first, to get a sense of how the recipe jives with my oven (every oven is different!). Then I follow suit with the rest of the cookies. Just like classic oatmeal cookies, these are great with hot coffee or tea, or cold milk. If you want to get doubly oaty, you can serve them with oat milk—DIY recipe here (bonus points if you make the chocolate variety). —Emma Laperruque