Crispy, chewy Oatmeal Cookies studded with butterscotch chips throughout. These are one of my absolute favorite Fall cookie recipes!
Are you a butterscotch chips house?
What I mean is.. is your family as in love with butterscotch chips as mine is?!
Growing up my entire family loved butterscotch chips. Our family favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe has both chocolate and butterscotch chips in them. It was THE cookie recipe growing up for me.
So, you could say butterscotch chips have a special place in my heart.
What are Oatmeal Scotchies then, exactly? A good ‘ole oatmeal cookie made with butterscotch chips. Oatmeal Scotchies should be chewy, filled with tons of butterscotch chips and oats, to make an easy yet unique spin on the classic oatmeal cookie.
Now that I have my own kids, I guess I have to “pass the baton” onto them and start them young on butterscotch chips too! 😉
How do you make the best, gluten-free Oatmeal Scotchies?
Let’s get to it.
First, you’ll want to make sure your coconut oil or butter is softened. Which means you can still see the stick of butter (or clump of coconut oil) but it’s lightly melting around the edges.
If your butter or coconut oil is too soft, then your cookies will spread too quickly.
Want thicker cookies? Go ahead and chill the cookie dough in the fridge for 30-60 minutes, prior to baking. Chilling the dough helps it to spread slower in the oven when baking, so you have a cookie that doesn’t spread as far and is thicker.
If I chill my cookie dough, I prefer to scoop it first into cookie dough balls, place them all on a plate, and then let them chill. Easy enough! 🙂
Next, what kind of oats to use??
You can use traditional rolled oats or quick-cooking oats. For those of you baking in high altitude, I recommend quick cooking oats because they won’t dry your cookies out as much as rolled oats will.
This also depends though on how you want the texture of your cookies to be. If you want more present oat chunks throughout your cookies, then use rolled oats. If you want more uniformed cookies, use quick-cooking. I like both!
Last but not least: make sure to use the best butterscotch chips! I like to buy chocolate chips off brand, but I don’t buy butterscotch chips off brand. I recommend Hershey Butterscotch chips.
Look at all those butterscotch chips!! Drool!! 🙂
Let me know in the comments below, are you a butterscotch family or do you stick to chocolate chips?!
More Fall recipes coming your way!: Check out my Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Oat Muffins, Snickerdoodle Cupcakes, and Apple Cinnamon Bread (all gluten-free!).
- 1 cup gluten-free all purpose flour (I use Bob's Red Mill 1-to-1)
- 1 cup oats, certified gluten-free
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 1/2 cup coconut oil, softened (or butter)
- 1/2 cup brown sugar
- 1/4 cup sugar
- 1 egg
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 3/4 cup butterscotch chips
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Preheat your oven to 350 and line two pans with parchment paper.
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In a small mixing bowl, add your flour, oats, baking soda, salt, cinnamon and stir them together till well combined.
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In a large mixing bowl, using a hand mixer, cream together your coconut oil (or butter) and sugars for a couple minutes. Add your egg and vanilla and mix together again briefly.
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Pour your dry ingredients into your wet ingredients and stir them together till a cookie dough forms. Add your butterscotch chips to the batter and gently fold them in.
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Scoop the dough out onto both pans, evenly spacing the cookies apart. Bake each pan in the oven for 10-12 minutes, or till the edges of the cookies are set and starting to darken.
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Let them cool and then devour!
Stored in an airtight container these cookies taste best within a week.
Delicious! I used real butter and king arthur GF flour because that’s all I had, and they came out perfectly. Thanks for the recipe!
I made a double batch of these today and they are delicious! I used Earth Balance butter stcks and had no problems. The cookies are nice and round with just the right balnce of crispness and chewyness. This recipe is a keeper.
Turned out great! I used butter, Krusteaz flour, substituted Just Egg, and added some orange zest. I also added an extra 1/2 cup of oats because the recipe on the back of the Nestle bag (they’re gluten frew now!! 🙂 ) has like 3 cups of oats and the dough was stickier than I’d like after only 1 cup of oats. then I let them sit in the fridge for a few hours. my first batch were a little dark after 11 mins but I will try 9 mins for the next one. super yummy and one of my faves!
Super sticky dough
Used red mill flour as suggested
Became oily blobs not cookies
When Hershey,s first came out with their butterscotch chips and oatmeal scottchies recipe years and years ago, the recipe had orange extract instead of cinnamon. I still use the orange extract to this day with the gluten free. My family loves them! However, with the gluten free mine don’t come out nice and round like the picture shows. How do you get them so nicely shaped? I use grass fed unsalted butter and all coconut sugar rather than the white and brown. I do that because coconut sugar is low on the glycemic index and I need to watch how much sugar I taken in. It adds the same kind of flavor as using coconut oil.
Hi Lee Ann. There’s a couple ways you can make sure your cookies are shaped better. First, be sure to scoop with a cookie dough scoop consistently (not overflowing the scooper). I also use a small spatula while the cookies are fresh out of the oven to very gently push some edges back in, for a more uniform look. Hope this helps!
I had an epiphany after making a few of these from my freezer… use the same recipe for oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. 🍪
I can’t wait to try it.
How do you get them to not spread so thin? I feel like the coconut oil just melted them completely into pools. They were tasty but super thin 🙁
Hi Megan. Did you use coconut oil that was softened or pretty melted? Coconut oil can be tricky. I’d recommend chilling the rolled balls of cookie dough in the fridge for 30 minutes and then try baking again.
Really yummy 😋 thank you for the recipe!! I used an egg replacer and everything was delicious!
Can you ou use a butter substitute like earth balance instead of coconut oil or regular butter? I also need a dairy free option but this looks delicious!!
Hi Elizabeth. Yes, these should work just fine with Earth Balance (or I like Country Crock Plant Butter). But if you need them to be dairy-free you’ll have to omit the butterscotch chips as well. You can replace them with dairy-free chocolate chips though!
Just made these and they oily pools of dough. I even refrigerated the dough before baking. Bummed.
I’m sorry to hear that Jessica!! I’m curious, what flour did you use?
Has anyone ever tried this recipe as a pan cookie?
These cookies were SO good, you would never know they’re gluten free. I used butter because I didn’t have any coconut oil. My daughter who has Celiac loved them! Thank you for sharing your recipe!!
So great to hear that Kim, thank you!
FYI…. most butterscotch chips are NOT gluten free. I learned that the hard way!
Great point, Traci! That’s exactly why I recommend to not buy off brand butterscotch chips, and recommend using Hershey’s (which is clearly labeled gluten free).
These are fantastically delicious! I just made my 2nd batch and doubled it. I will bake a dozen right away and flash freeze cookie dough balls for those times when I just want a couple. All of my family members who are not GF love these as well. Thank you!
Great to hear! You’re welcome, Julie!
AHHH-MAZING! I followed the recipe and they turned out so great! With my coocie scoop, I ended up with 1.5 dozwn (btw, in case anyone doesn’t know what a dozen is, it’s 12 😉 ) I am about two months in to being a GF “woman of a certain age”, and these return some “normalcy” to treats and baking. Thank you!
So great to hear! Thanks Julie 🙂
I have a question. I notice you didn’t add xanthan gum. Usually recipes with gluten-free flour call for a teaspoon, unless it is already added to the flour.
Yes, Casey, I would recommend using a gluten-free all purpose flour blend that already contains xanthan gum.
Thank you, Chelsea! Will give them a try!
For some reason the dough was incredibly dry but I added a little bit of water and that fixed it! I kept checking the recipe to see what I did wrong but nope…
Hi Holly. That’s odd! Maybe your butter wasn’t quite soft enough? Oatmeal cookie dough does tend to be more dry and hard to work with, but it shouldn’t be so overly dry that you can’t scoop cookies out.
Is almond flour ok to use?
No. It is not a 1-to-1 substitution.
I had a similar issue with the dough. It was pretty dry, so assembling the cookies was difficult. I rolled with it anyways because my baking skills/knowledge are limited. They mostly turned out great! Next time, I will add water if the same issue occurs. Good suggestion!
I used 1/2 cup quick oats and 1/2 cup rolled oats and I substituted overflowing 1/4 cup coconut sugar for the white sugar. Gooey in middle and crisp on edges. Delicious! Tastes just like the recipe I had for years. My family has always loved scotchies. When I became gluten free in 2014, I thought I would never make and eat these again. Thank you!
Awesome! I’m so happy to hear that it brings back that nostalgia for you and you enjoyed them! Love it.
This is my very first comment I’ve ever put on a recipe blog. I’ve been GF for a decade and I have tasted MANY cookies. These… wow, these are incredible! I used butter, 1/2 tsp pumpkin spice and pumpkin chips and WOW. I didn’t even have “good” GF flour… just some 1-to-1 stuff on clearance at Walmart. This is the very, very, very first time I will say that a cookie didn’t even taste GF! (When people have said that in the past, I never believe… because nothing is as good as the real stuff I remember from years ago.) Thanks for sharing this!
AWESOME to hear!! Thank you Kat. I loved reading this 🙂
Cookies are delicious!! This recipe is perfect and worked great at 7,000 feet in Flagstaff, AZ! I did not make any changes to the recipe.
Great to hear, thanks Nat!!
Anyone know of a source for gluten free dairy free butterscotch chips?
Bravo! I just tried this recipe and they are amazing ~ Thank you so much for sharing this deliciousness.
Thank you so much Roxie! Love hearing that.
So I followed someone else’s path and used almond flour instead of gluten free flour and increase the oats by half a cup. I also added one extra egg yolk because the dough just seemed really dry to me. They turned out fabulous!
Great recipe! I subbed almond flour and added an extra 1/2 cup of the trader joe oats – added an extra 3-4 minutes to make them crispy bottom and they are perfection!!! Thanks!
Did you sub almond flour 1:1 for gf flour? So 1 cup almond flour and 1.5 cups oats?
Very good cookies. I used peanut butter chips only because I didn’t have butterscotch. My family loved these. I will be making them often.
Great to hear, Jackie! And yum, peanut butter chips sound good too!
Thanks for sharing!! These look great. Can’t wait to try them
Thanks, Lisa! Hope you all love them!
Could I use Oat flout?
Hi Lois – I wouldn’t recommend using oat flour in place for these cookies. I don’t think oat flour works quite as well in cookies in general (more of a personal preference though), but you can try it, I just don’t know for sure how they would turn out.
These are absolutely delicious! Hard to stop eating them
Haha yes it’s hard to eat just one! So glad to hear that Desiree, thanks for the sweet comment.
Love these! No changes to recipe!
Awesome, thank you so much!! 🙂
These cookies are absolutely awesome! I used Pillsbury Best GF All Purpose Flour because I didn’t have access to Bob’s.
Thank you for sharing this wonderful recipe!
Awesome!! Thank you, Georgia, for the comment! So glad you enjoyed them.
Does it matter if they are Gluten free quick oats or GF old fashioned oats?
Hi Trisha, I would recommend old fashioned oats. Unless you’re baking at high altitude, then I would recommend quick cooking.
where can I find gluten free butterscotch chips?
Hi Susan. From what I’ve read Hershey’s butterscotch chips are gluten-free, and you can find them at Walmart or Kroger/King Soopers I believe. I’m betting Safeway may have them too. Or you can get them off amazon, https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00B1R5F4C/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=milehighmittsblog-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=B00B1R5F4C&linkId=096a2899f2521124ede946faafa55e9a
Guittard Butterscotch Baking Chips – no artificial colors or flavors, no hydrogenated oils, free from peanuts, tree nuts, gluten. They do not use ingredients that are genetically engineered.