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Beautiful, delicate lace cookies with hints of caramel and an irresistible crunch in just 30 minutes! This easy lace cookie recipe has only 6 ingredients, makes cookies that are crispy and light as air.
Lace Cookies are easy drop cookies that taste like toffee! One of my parents’ friends would send a little tin filled with these delicate, crunchy, sweet cookies every year. My Mom and I looked forward to it all Christmas season! This lace cookie recipe without corn syrup is Mrs. Ledford’s.
The sugar caramelizes while baking and combines with the oats to produce a magical flavor. I personally think they taste even better frozen! Make a batch of these lace cookies to serve with soft gingerbread cookies, crescent cookies, pfeffernusse, brown butter chocolate chip cookies and linzer cookies!
Table of Contents
Why This is the Best Lace Cookie Recipe
- Excellent flavor. This lace cookie recipe has the perfect amount of butter for that rich, brown butter flavor and sugar for spreading and caramelization.
- No chill batter. The batter comes together in 5 minutes and each batch bakes in 10 minutes! That means you can have cookies cooling in under 30 minutes!
- Makes a lot of cookies quickly. This is a great recipe for gifting, not only because it is delicious, but also because it makes a lot of cookies with little effort. Like ice box cookies or slice and bake cranberry orange cookies, this recipe yields over 50 cookies from one batch!
Professional Tips for Making Lace Cookies
- Bake them on the shiny side of the foil. Ever noticed that there is a matte and an extra shiny side of the aluminum foil? Bake these on the shiny side to easily peel-off the baked cookies!
- Don’t chill the dough. These cookies spread best, which is key to their crispy caramelized texture, when the batter is not cold.
- Use a piping bag. The recipe calls for dropping the batter by the ½ teaspoon onto baking sheets. It’s tedious. You can also pipe the batter from a piping bag. It takes practice to get the size right, but it is so worth it!
What are lace cookies?
Oatmeal lace cookies are drop cookies made from a thin oatmeal batter that is dropped by the ½ teaspoon on baking sheets. The cookies spread and caramelize while baking for a thin cookie that resembles lace!
Ingredients
- All-Purpose Flour: There is barely any all-purpose flour in this recipe. Truth be told I break all my own measuring rules and I dip a tablespoon measure right into the flour bag, level it off and dump it in. If you tell anyone, I’ll deny it!
- Quick Oats: I used quick oats for a completely uniform batter, but you could also use rolled oats that you’ve processed or not. It depends on the finished texture that you want.
- Granulated Sugar: Granulated sugar is here for sweetness and is in perfect proportion to the butter and flour.
- Kosher Salt: Kosher salt is lass salty than table salt and a teaspoon weighs less than other finer ground varieties. It heightens the flavor here and will keep your cookies from tasting dull or flat.
- Melted Butter: It is critical that the melted butter for this recipe is hot! It helps dissolve the sugar and make a cohesive batter that will spread during baking.
- Whole Egg: The eggs are here to add fat, moisture and leavening. The fat from the yolk adds richness and helps keep the cookies chewy. Beating in the eggs just enough will add a little or a lot of leavening depending on the desired texture. Eggs also emulsify the batter and keep everything texturally perfect.
- Vanilla Extract: Vanilla Extract adds a beautiful flavor itself but it also boosts the flavor of other ingredients around it.
See the recipe card for full information on ingredients and quantities.
Substitutions & Variations
- Gluten Free Lace Cookies: You can substitute a Gluten Free All Purpose flour such as Bob’s Red Mill Gluten Free 1-1 Baking Flour for the All-Purpose flour to easily make this recipe gluten free! Just be sure to use gluten free oats as well!
- Use nut flour: You can substitute almond meal or pecan meal for the oats! This adds another layer of flavor!
- Rolled Oats: Use any type of oat that you want. I use quick cooking oats for a smooth batter, but rolled oats will give a nice texture to the final lace cookies.
How to Make Lace Cookies
Use these instructions to make the oatmeal lace cookies! Further details and measurements can be found in the recipe card below.
Step 1: Preheat your oven to 325° and line several baking sheets with aluminum foil (shiny side up).
Step 2: Mix oats, flour, sugar and salt in a large bowl. Pour very hot melted butter over the flour mixture and stir until the butter has coated everything and the sugar has dissolved. Add the eggs and vanilla; stir well.
If you are using rolled oats rather than quick oats, give them a quick pulse in the food processor or blender to chop them up.
Step 3: Drop ½ teaspoons of the batter 2 inches apart on ungreased foil lined sheets.
This tip is straight from the professional kitchen: transfer the bag to a piping bag and cut a hole just large enough for the oats to pass through easily. Pipe the batter onto the cookie sheets. It will take a little practice, but it’ll be worth it!
Step 4: Bake 10-12 minutes, rotating sheet halfway through [both spinning it and swapping racks], until they turn a golden brown. Let cool on pan on a wire rack.
Step 5: When cool they will peel effortlessly off the foil! Store in an airtight container and don’t forget to hide a secret stash for you! You earned it!
Chef Lindsey’s Recipe Tip
I have tried making these larger and I would not recommend more than 1 teaspoon of batter per cookie. Any larger and the outsides burn before the insides are cooked. Still delicious, but not perfect.
Frequently Asked Questions
Store baked cookies in an airtight container at room temperature for up to a month or for several months frozen. Layer the cookies between waxed paper or parchment. Do not store with any other cookies or they will absorb the moisture and soften.
Oatmeal lace cookies freeze perfectly. I love to eat them straight from the freezer but you could also allow them to thaw at room temperature.
In my experience, no, but growing up we received a small tin of these cookies as a gift every Christmas and they arrived remarkably intact. I don’t know what her secret was because the year I shipped these to friends and family, they all received oatmeal lace cookie crumbs.
The batter bakes best as soon as it is prepared! There is no need to chill the batter before scooping. If you would like to make it ahead or in batches, then allow the batter to come to room temperature before proceeding. Chilled batter will produce thicker, less lacy cookies.
If you tried this recipe and loved it please leave a 🌟 star rating and let me know how it goes in the comments below. I love hearing from you; your comments make my day!
Lace Cookies
Ingredients
- 2 cups quick oats or rolled oats
- 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
- 2 cups sugar
- ½ teaspoon kosher salt
- 1 cup butter melted, still hot, not cooled
- 2 eggs beaten
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 325° and line several baking sheets with aluminum foil (shiny side up).
- I have very hearty rolled oats and so I processed mine in the food processor just to break them down some.
- Mix oats, flour, sugar and salt in a large bowl. Pour very hot melted butter over the flour mixture and stir until the butter has coated everything and the sugar has dissolved. Add the eggs and vanilla; stir well.
- Drop ½ teaspoons of the batter 2 inches apart on ungreased foil lined sheets.
- Bake 1 sheet at a time 10-12 minutes, rotating sheet halfway through, until they turn a golden brown. Let cool on pan on a wire rack.
- When cool they will peal effortlessly off the foil!
- Store in an airtight container and don’t forget to hide a secret stash for you! You earned it!
Video
Notes
Nutrition
Before You Go!
Check out our other delicious, chef-developed Cookie Recipes, these easy Christmas cookies, or peruse all our 100+ Christmas Cookie Recipes! You might also want to narrow the search to just these 24 Best Christmas Cookies!
I made these for Christmas this year and they were a big hit! They are so light and delicate!
Hi Mari! Thanks for coming back and letting me know, it made my day! So glad to hear you and yours enjoyed these on Christmas. ?
this reminds me of the oat cookies I get whenever I go to Ikea (totally addicted) oat cookies sandwiched together with semisweet chocolate in the middle…yummmmm
Definitely going to do this!
I want to these…do you think its best to start with quick oats? thanks!
Hi Smita, Quick Oats might be too flimsy but you could certainly try and see. I used old-fashioned rolled oats, but the kind that is still fairly quick cooking like Quakers.
Thank you! I too have some really hearty oats, so I will break them down a bit in the food processor as you did. I want to make an ice box cake with these. You know, layers of cookies and a light fluffy chocolate mousse in between. Some of the cookies will soften and release the caramel….
I’m calling you out here! I think you may have burned half your batch on purpose. And now I want my kitchen to smell amazing and have dozens of cookies laying all over the place. Or I could just beg you to send me some instead. I mean, you did burn half the batch…why not get back in the kitchen and prove to yourself that you can make an entire batch “burn free”? (That’s my weak attempt to get you to make some more of these cookies…did it work?) #CookieMonsterDiet
Bahaha! I wish I could say that I did burn them all on purpose and don’t tempt me into making another perfect batch! Ain’t nobody got time for pride around the holidays! 🙂
These oat lace cookies, I made today!
They came out perfect! So thanks a bunch! 🙂
That’s wonderful to hear! Thanks for stopping back by to let me know!