With plenty of melty chocolate, chewy oats, and a sprinkle of sea salt, these dark chocolate chunk oatmeal cookies are guaranteed to be your new favorite cookie variety. They’re extra buttery and soft with slightly crisp edges and a touch of cinnamon and molasses for classic oatmeal cookie flavor. This cookie has it all!
I originally published this recipe in 2015 and have since added new photos and more helpful success tips. I have also made a few small changes to the recipe which are reflected in the printable recipe below.
Alright, I’m saying it. Oatmeal cookies are forever the best cookie on the planet. (This statement probably doesn’t surprise many of you!) Regular chocolate chip cookies are a bonafide crowd-pleaser, but they don’t hold a candle to the texture, chew, and toasty flavor of its oatmeal counterpart.
I originally published these dark chocolate chunk oatmeal cookies several years ago and after making them at least 1200x, I decided to spruce up the photos and make a couple slight changes to the dough including using more oats and adding a sprinkle of sea salt. We’re still using plenty of dark chocolate chunks, whole oats, and a touch of molasses for classic flavor. (See recipe notes below for the exact changes.)
Why You’ll Love these Dark Chocolate Chunk Oatmeal Cookies
Let me count the ways!
- Loaded with pure dark chocolate
- Super soft inside
- Chewy, hearty oats
- Cinnamon, brown sugar, and molasses for extra flavor
- Buttery crisp edges
- Topped with crunchy sea salt
- No crazy ingredients or mixing techniques
And I know you’ll appreciate this too: the cookie dough chilling time is short, making these a pretty quick cookie that holds its shape beautifully.
One reader, Marie, commented: “Once again, I made these Monday and they were delicious and will be added to the favorites… even though I thought I had my favorite oatmeal cookie recipe—LOL! Added some chopped pecans. Hard to resist, so into the freezer with 1/2 the batch! ★★★★★“
One reader, Sarah, commented: “These are hands-down the best oatmeal chocolate cookies I’ve ever had. Absolutely loved them! I used a chopped up dark chocolate bar and some semi-sweet chips. Refrigerated for 1 hour, then baked, and they came out perfectly. Thank you for sharing! ★★★★★“
The Best Oatmeal Cookie Base
If you’ve made some of my oatmeal cookie recipes before, you’re likely familiar with today’s variation. I usually stick to the same base recipe and you can see that in my Oatmeal Raisin Cookies, White Chocolate Chip Cherry Oatmeal Cookies, Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies, Oatmeal Scotchies, and Oatmeal M&M Cookies.
Have I mentioned I love oatmeal cookies?
I use a little more flour in today’s cookies because of the melty chocolate. Filled with brown sugar, cinnamon, butter, and vanilla flavors, this oatmeal cookie is ALWAYS a guarantee in both the texture and flavor departments. I’ve actually nicknamed them my “slow bend” cookies—the centers are so buttery and chewy that they don’t crunch and break when you start to bend them. The best!
How to Make These Dark Chocolate Chunk Oatmeal Cookies
- Cream butter + sugars: Use a hand or stand mixer to cream softened butter with brown sugar and granulated sugar until smooth. If you’re new to baking, here is my complete tutorial on how to cream butter and sugar. For extra flavor and chew, always use more brown sugar than granulated white sugar in oatmeal cookies.
- Add eggs, vanilla, + molasses: Add eggs, then mix on high for about 1 minute until incorporated. Add vanilla and molasses, mix until combined.
- Dry ingredients: Mix flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt together in a separate bowl. Pour this into the wet ingredients. Combine together on low.
- Add the extras: Beat in the oats and chocolate chunks on low speed. Pieces of chocolate will break down, so there’s chocolate in literally every single piece of cookie dough.
- Chill: The cookie dough is pretty sticky, so chilling it is imperative. Without at least 30-60 minutes in the refrigerator, your cookies will spread into flat puddles. Chilling cookie dough is one way to guarantee thicker cookies. If you’re interested, see my 10 tips for how to prevent cookies from spreading. My white chocolate macadamia oatmeal cookies are another quick chill recipe to try.
- Roll: Roll cookie dough into balls and place on a lined baking sheet. Since it’s a textured and chunky dough, I usually use a cookie scoop to help. Since the cookie dough chilled, it’s much easier to work with.
- Bake: Bake the cookies at 350°F (177°C) until lightly browned around the edges. The cookies might look under-baked, but they will continue to set as they cool. While they’re still warm, sprinkle each with a little sea salt.
Best part: Right out of the oven, experience pools of melty chocolate in every single bite.
Best Chocolate To Use
There are so many chocolate products on the market, so let me help you navigate the best choice for today’s cookies. As if you were making chocolate truffles or chocolate ganache, stick to pure quality chocolate here. I’m referring to baking chocolate, which is sold in 4 ounce bars in the baking aisle. Chocolate chips definitely work since these are cookies, but if you want big chunks of melted chocolate, choose chocolate that’s meant to melt. Chocolate chips contain stabilizers that prevent them from melting in the oven.
I recommend bittersweet or semi-sweet chocolate. For a sweeter cookie, you can use white chocolate or milk chocolate. I prefer Ghirardelli or Baker’s brands. (FYI Baker’s milk chocolate variety is sold as “German Chocolate.”)
- No matter which level of sweetness you choose, cut the bars into little chunks that are similar or slightly larger than regular chocolate chips. But keep in mind that the smaller the pieces, the more they’ll blend right into the cookie dough turning this into a chocolate oatmeal cookie… which isn’t necessarily a bad thing!
More Dark Chocolate Recipes You’ll Love
- Dark Chocolate Almond Clusters
- Salted Caramel Dark Chocolate Cookies
- Chocolate Cupcakes
- Salted Dark Chocolate Cookies
- Dark Chocolate Orange Biscotti
- Dark Chocolate Cranberry Almond Cookies
Dark Chocolate Chunk Oatmeal Cookies
- Prep Time: 45 minutes
- Cook Time: 12 minutes
- Total Time: 1 hour
- Yield: 3 dozen
- Category: Cookies
- Method: Baking
- Cuisine: American
Description
Soft and chewy with slightly crisp edges, these oatmeal cookies are full of flavor and exploding with melty dark chocolate. Chill the dough for at least 30 minutes in the refrigerator before baking.
Ingredients
- 1 cup (16 Tbsp; 226g) unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
- 1 cup (200g) packed light or dark brown sugar
- 1/4 cup (50g) granulated sugar
- 2 large eggs, at room temperature
- 1 Tablespoon pure vanilla extract (yes, Tablespoon!)
- 1 Tablespoon (15ml) unsulphured or dark molasses (do not use blackstrap; I prefer Grandma’s brand)
- 1 and 2/3 cups (210g) all-purpose flour (spooned & leveled)
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 3 cups (255g) old-fashioned whole rolled oats*
- two 4-ounce semi-sweet chocolate bars, chopped (1 and 1/2 cups)*
- optional: coarse sea salt for topping
Instructions
- Using a hand mixer or a stand mixer fitted with paddle attachment, cream the softened butter and both sugars together on medium speed until smooth, about 3 minutes. (Here’s a helpful tutorial if you need guidance on how to cream butter and sugar.) Add the eggs and mix on high until combined, about 1 minute. Scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl as needed. Add the vanilla and molasses and mix on high until combined. Set aside.
- In a separate bowl, whisk the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt together. Add to the wet ingredients and mix on low until combined. Beat in the oats and chocolate on low speed. Dough will be thick, yet very sticky. Chill the dough for 30-60 minutes in the refrigerator (I always chill this dough for only 30 minutes). If chilling for longer (up to 2 days), allow to sit at room temperature for at least 30 minutes before rolling and baking. The cookies won’t spread as much if chilled for longer than 1 hour.
- Preheat oven to 350°F (177°C). Line two large baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mats. Set aside.
- Roll balls of dough (about 1 and 1/2 Tablespoons of dough per cookie) and place 2 inches apart on the baking sheets. I recommend using a cookie scoop since the dough can be sticky. Bake for 11-12 minutes or until lightly browned on the sides. The centers will look soft and under-baked. Remove from the oven, immediately sprinkle each with sea salt (if using), then let cool on baking sheet for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely. The cookies will continue to “set” on the baking sheet during this time.
- Cover and store leftover cookies at room temperature for up to 1 week.
Notes
- Make Ahead & Freezing Instructions: Baked cookies freeze well up to three months. Unbaked cookie dough balls freeze well—up to three months. Bake frozen cookie dough balls for an extra minute, no need to thaw. Here’s how to freeze cookie dough.
- Special Tools (affiliate links): Electric Mixer (Handheld or Stand) | Baking Sheet | Silicone Baking Mat or Parchment Paper | Medium Cookie Scoop | Cooling Rack
- Molasses: If you don’t have molasses, you can leave it out. It’s used to add a little extra flavor, and won’t affect the texture if you skip it. You could also replace it with pure maple syrup.
- Oats: For these oatmeal cookies, I use and recommend old-fashioned whole oats. They provide the ultimate hearty, chewy, thick texture we love!
- Eggs: Room temperature eggs preferred. Good rule of thumb: always use room temperature eggs when using room temperature butter.
- Chocolate: Though chocolate chips work just fine, if you want big chunks of melty chocolate, use pure baking chocolate. See Best Chocolate to Use in the blog post above. I prefer semi-sweet or bittersweet chocolate here. Chop chocolate into chunks around the same size or slightly larger than chocolate chips.
- Be sure to check out my top 5 cookie baking tips AND these are my 10 must-have cookie baking tools.
- Adapted from Loaded Oatmeal Cookies (The original recipe base. If you’d like to make them that way, follow that recipe and use 1 an 1/2 cups chopped chocolate instead of the listed multiple add-ins). Recipe originally published on Sally’s Baking Recipes in 2015.
Reader Comments and Reviews
can I add nuts and pepita(pumpkin seed) to the recipe? I tried adding a tablespoon of chia seeds but I’m afraid to add more because it might change the texture and make the cookies dry.
Hi Rinah! You can add nuts and pepitas to this recipe – we would reduce the amount of dark chocolate chunks for a total of 1 1/2 cups of add ins (chocolate and nuts) in the cookie dough.
The best my husband loved them!!
These were wonderful! Made exactly as the recipe states, using dark brown sugar and chocolate chunks instead of a bar. I refrigerated the dough for ~1 hour and baked for 13 minutes. They came out perfectly! I definitely recommend sprinkling with sea salt at the end as I found them a little too sweet without it, but I will definitely be making these again. Thanks, Sally!
I made these cookies and everyone in my family raved about them. They were absolutely delicious! I also made your soft and chewy oatmeal raisin cookies and red velvet kiss cookies recently.
I noticed in each of the recipe, you said to mix the egg on high for 1 minute. I saw my egg was thoroughly mixed in less than a minute, maybe about 30 seconds or so on high mode. Is it necessary to continue mixing for close to 1 minute? Will it deflate the air that was initially trapped by the creaming of butter and sugar?
Thank you.
Hi Julie, 30-60 seconds is enough for mixing in the egg. Beating for the entire minute won’t do any harm to the creamed butter/sugar mixture though. The air wouldn’t really begin to deflate until closer to the 4 or 5 minute mark.
This is my new go-to cookie recipe. Old-fashioned oats aren’t available where I live so I subbed 2 and 1/2 cups of quick oats and still got a great chewy texture! Thanks so much, Sally, for this recipe. It’s amazing!
Hi Sally, I’m planning on making these cookies for Christmas, would it be possible to use brown butter instead of regular softened butter. Thanks!!! Also love your recipes!!!
Hi Katelin, Yes – YUM!! Just let the browned butter cools and solidify first. Here is exactly how we make and use brown butter.
Oh my, these look so good. I did your oatmeal raisin cookies and they were amazing! I love that your recipes do not use too much sugar as I don’t like it too sweet.
Am I able to add raisins into this cookie batter? Raisin dark chocolate combo for oatmeal cookies sounds so good! How much/ when can I add? Thank you!
Absolutely! You can use 3/4 cup each of raisins and dark chocolate. (Or even bump it up to 1 cup each if you’d like a lot of add-ins.) Add when the recipe instructs to add dark chocolate.
Hi Sally! I’ve been baking these one for several times. But I was wondering (and forgot to ask before) if the cookies were really that soft that it breaks easily while I’m holding it?
First of all, thanks Sally’s Baking for al these tips. I made this recipe and its the first time I achieved the consistency I was looking for. The only thing is that my cookies spread but not as much as the picture. I had to gave the a little touch to spread them after I took them off the oven. Other than that OMG they were soooo good!!!!
These are hands down the best oatmeal chocolate cookies I’ve ever had. Absolutely loved them! I used a chopped up dark chocolate bar and some semi-sweet chips. Refrigerated for 1 hour and then baked about 12-13 minutes each and they came out perfectly. Thank you for sharing!!
Hi Sally
Thank you so much for this another amazing recipe. My cookies did not set in the middle still very soft ( not that we did not enjoy them ) and some did not hold their shape, what do you think I did wrong? Xx
Hi Donna, It sounds like they could have used an extra minute or two in the oven. An easy fix for next time!
Hi Sally, can I reduce the recipe to a small batch? maybe 1/2? Thanks!
Yes, this recipe can be cut in half. Enjoy!
Hi Sally! Thank you for this recipe!
Can I just simply remove the chocolate chunks if making Oatmeal Cookies?
You can definitely leave them plain, without the chocolate. Enjoy!
Hi Sally, Im planning on making a big batch of these to give out, so i was wondering if this recipe can be doubled or tripled in one go? I thought i read somewhere that you have to be cautious when doubling a recipe specially when it contains baking soda and/or baking powder. Just wanting to be sure before i give it a go so not to ruin the entire batch! haha. Thanks
Hi Kristine, We always caution against doubling cake and cupcakes recipes as it’s very easy to over mix them causing a dense texture. I double cookie recipes all the time! This recipe make 3 dozen cookies so I recommend doubling and not tripling so you do not overwhelm your mixer.
These are my go to cookies, I’ve made them almost every week for the past 3 months cause my roommates keep asking for more. I’ve also tried several variations instead of chocolate: my favorite is hazelnut slivers and raisins, but also poppyseeds or almond slivers was good when we tried it. They can also be made vegan easily by replacing the eggs with flax eggs, tastes just as good but they spread a bit more.
Hi Sally.
I have made the cookies several times. My family loves them. ^^ in my last batch, i tried to add a little bit of cocoa powder n reduce the flour. They came out just as nice.
Thank you so much for sharing the recipe and the tips. 🙂
The cookies were caramel-y, chewy and addictive. Do yourself a favor and make them.
Hi Sally!
I made this recipe into 2 batches –
the other one with the oatmeal and the other one without. The batch with no oatmeals spread out and became flat. 🙁
Is this recipe not recommended to omit the oatmeal?
I made these today and they turned out absolutely amazing. My husband said they were the best cookies he’s ever had. Instead of chunks of chocolate, I used dark chocolate chips. I chilled for 45ish minutes and they baked perfectly at 350 in exactly 11 minutes. Adding this to my favorites list!
Hi Sally
I made oatmeal Chocolate chunk cookies by your recipe and they turned out to be absolutely delicious.
The best thing about your recipes are the detailed tips that you provide. Trust me, it helps immensely.
My birthday is coming up and i want to bake the best Cake of yours. Please suggest asap.
I’m so happy you enjoyed these cookies, Preetika. It’s difficult to recommend a specific cake without knowing any details about what flavor profile you enojy or equipment you own but you can browse all of my cake recipes here and pick one that fits your needs. Have a happy birthday!
These oatmeal cookies were good… They had nice texture, but to say the least, I just didn’t get that “oatmeal flavor” from these cookies. I usually don’t like giving recipes less than a four but this one didn’t quite make it…
hi is it possible to leave the shaped dough of this recipe in the fridge days before baking it? or will the oats absorb the liquid? thank you !!
Hi Danielle, You can refrigerate the dough for up to 2 days. I often freeze unbaked cookie dough balls and then bake them right from the freezer. See recipe notes!
Made these with my three old son and followed the recipe faithfully. I think they tasted good but they spread thinner and were very hard to get off the baking sheet even after the 5 min resting time.
Hi Sally,
My daughter and me just baked this and tasted it. It came out so perfect so good. It is very rich in taste. Loved it! I had only one egg left and only one cup flour. So I reduced the oats to 2 cups instead of 1 cup. And didn’t have vanilla extract. I used chocolate chips , because my daughter wanted it. And I had Molasses. that was great. All in all it turned out great.
Hey Sally! I love all your recipes but i was just wondering we’re 110% fans of your chewy oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. What’s the difference between them? i could spot a bit less sugar and chocolate but does it change the texture or anything else…?
Not really! I wanted a deeper darker flavor here so I reduced the sugar and added the dark chocolate.
Hi Sally,
Made these today and they are quite tasty. My only issue with these cookies is the texture of the oats. It feels like I’m eating a piece of paper/cardboard when I chew on the oats. I bake with oats frequently and I’ve never had this problem. Would toasting the oats first make a difference? Thank you.
Hi Adriana, What type of oats are you using? For the best texture I use and recommend old fashioned whole oats.
I am only 13 and I made this in less than half and hour! I had to make a lot of substitutions because we didn’t have everything: instead of chocolate I added extra cinnamon, honey and vanilla. I swapped the molasses for honey, and the bi carb soda for 1/2 tsp baking powder. I chilled it for 30mins, perfect easy recipe 🙂
Hi, Sally! I made these cookies last night, and they were amazing. They were nice and crispy before I stored them (fully cooled off) but then they became chewy overnight in my cookie tin. How do you store your cookies to preserve crispiness?
If you don’t store them tightly covered, the exposed air keeps them on the crisper side. 🙂
I didn’t care for the cinnamon in these. I was hoping for a normal oatmeal chocolate chunk cookie. It was just a weird blend of classic oatmeal cookie flavor and chocolate chunk–doesn’t go together in my taste buds. I might try again and omit the cinnamon.
Mine didn’t rise at all. They stayed the same shape as the cookie scoop ♀️ Maybe I refrigerated the dough too long I’m not sure.