Two weekends ago, my mom started craving carrot cake. She talked about it at lunch, mentioned it at dinner, and finally caved at 9 pm and drove to Safeway to pick up a slice. When she arrived home, she grabbed a fork, plopped down in her favorite armchair, and slowly savored every bite, stopping with enough left to finish the following day.
Although Mom bought me a slice of my favorite 6-layer chocolate cake at the same time, I couldn’t help but stare and hope with all of my fingers crossed behind my back that she’d offer me a taste. That cream cheese frosting… Those soft streaks of carrot… The tender cinnamon cake… It looked mesmerizing!
Despite enjoying every last morsel of my chocolate dessert, I couldn’t get carrot cake off of my mind. I pictured that square during every run (since my path went past the same grocery store) and whenever I stuck my head into the fridge for fresh fruit and veggie snacks.
I seriously contemplated baking my own again, but knowing that my self-control sometimes flies straight out the window with any type of cake, I went with the next best thing…
Cookies! These Healthy Carrot Cake Oatmeal Cookies blew me away, and not just from their built-in portion control. The cozy oats, the comforting cinnamon, the soft carrots… They truly tasted just like carrot cake. Pure bliss in every bite!
Even better? These cookies are really easy to make — and faster than regular carrot cake too!
KEY INGREDIENTS TO MAKE HEALTHY CARROT CAKE OATMEAL COOKIES
Let’s talk about the key ingredients that you’ll need to make these healthy carrot cake oatmeal cookies! I based them off of the most popular recipe on my site: my oatmeal raisin cookies. Have you tried those yet? Hands down, they’re the BEST oatmeal cookies I’ve ever eaten. They’re soft, tender, chewy — everything a cookie should be — and countless readers have said nobody believes that they’re lightened up and made without refined flour or refined sugar!
Oats. Like many of my other healthy oatmeal cookie recipes, you’ll use instant oats to make these. They’re also called “quick cooking” and “one minute” oats. They’re not the ones that come in packets with flavors like maple brown sugar and apple cinnamon!
Just like old-fashioned rolled oats, instant oats contain just one ingredient: oats! However, they differ in one key way. Instant oats are smaller and thinner than old-fashioned rolled oats. This smaller size means they soften faster, and that yields the best soft and chewy texture in your oatmeal cookies.
Tip: If you’d like to make your healthy carrot cake oatmeal cookies gluten-free, then substitute certified gluten-free instant oats. They work perfectly!
Flour. I opted for whole wheat flour to make these oatmeal cookies. I love how it has more fiber and micronutrients!
Tip: If you’d like to make your carrot cake oatmeal cookies gluten-free, then see the Notes section of the recipe. I’ve included how to do so there!
Cinnamon. It’s a carrot cake staple! I love the cozy flavor it adds to both regular carrot cake and these healthy oatmeal cookies. If you’re a big cinnamon fan (like I am!), I highly recommend this variety. It tastes a bit stronger, sweeter, and richer than regular cinnamon. Many stores have started stocking it, but I generally buy it online here. It’s really affordable — and basically the only kind I now use in my baking!
Unsalted butter or coconut oil. Just a bit! Unlike more traditional cookie recipes that call for ½ cup or more, you only need 2 tablespoons. That really helps keep your healthy carrot cake oatmeal cookies low calorie and low fat!
Tip: Both work equally well, so feel free to use whichever one you normally keep on hand. If you use coconut oil, your healthy carrot cake oatmeal cookies will be dairy-free!
Egg. A common oatmeal cookie ingredient! The egg binds everything together, and it also yields a beautifully chewy texture.
Sweetener. For this version, I swapped out the honey from my oatmeal raisin cookie recipe for pure maple syrup. I love its sweet and cozy flavor in my carrot cake recipe, and I had a feeling it’d work well in these cookies too. Spoiler alert: It was perfect!
Pure maple syrup often comes in thin glass bottles or squat plastic jugs (like this). It only contains one ingredient: maple syrup!
Tip: Skip the pancake syrup and sugar-free maple syrup! These contain other ingredients, which can change the way they behave in baking recipes. This is particularly true of sugar-free maple syrup! It’s usually water-based, and that will make your cookies cakey or bready, rather than chewy.
Carrots. Lots and lots of carrots. I love my regular carrot cake positively packed with them — not just a plain spice cake with the occasional fleck of orange — so I took the same approach with these healthy oatmeal cookies. That turned out so well!
For the best taste and texture, use peeled and freshly grated carrots. Don’t substitute store-bought, pre-shredded carrots! They’re also called “matchstick carrots.” They’re thicker and drier, so they don’t soften properly. It only takes a few moments to grate your own, and I promise the results are completely worth it!
HOW TO MAKE HEALTHY CARROT CAKE OATMEAL COOKIES
Let’s quickly go over how to make the best carrot cake oatmeal cookies! This recipe is easy and straightforward — I promise! — and I also have some tips to ensure your cookies turn out beautifully soft, chewy, and flavorful.
Measure correctly. This is one of the most crucial parts of this recipe! It’s extremely important to measure the oats and flour correctly. Do NOT scoop them directly from the container! Instead, use this method or a kitchen scale. (← That’s the one I own!) Scooping or improperly measuring can result in up to 1 ½ times as much of either ingredient. That extra amount of flour or oats will change the texture of your cookies, especially the oats! They act like little sponges by soaking up lots of moisture in the dough. Too much of either will dry out your cookies and make them cakey, bready, or dry — but if you measure them correctly, your cookies will be perfectly soft and chewy!
Chill the dough. Chilling is mandatory! It gives the oats time to soak up some moisture and helps reduce spreading. If you skipped chilling, the cookie dough would flatten thinner than a pancake while in the oven and create one huge cookie blob on the baking sheet. Not good! So avoid cookie blobs and chill your dough. Just 30 minutes — that’s it!
Drop + shape. The cookie dough will still be somewhat soft and sticky after chilling, so use a spoon and spatula to drop it onto the baking sheet. Because it only spreads some — but not a lot — you’ll also flatten it a bit to give your cookies a “head start” on spreading.
Tip: These are the spatulas I use. They’re so handy — and really cute too!
Bake + cool. It’s time! Slide that baking sheet in the oven. To ensure these cookies stay soft and chewy, you’ll underbake them ever so slightly. Just by a hair! Pull them out when the centers still feel a little soft and squidgy. You’ll let the cookies cool for a full 10-15 minutes on the warm baking sheet, and the residual heat will finish cooking those centers all the way through without the outsides turning cakey, bready, or crunchy. This is my #1 tip for the best soft and chewy oatmeal cookies! They’ll stay soft for an entire week… If they last that long!
Reshape (optional). If your cookies look a little lopsided and not completely round when you remove them from the oven, then immediately grab a butter knife and gently nudge any misshapen bits back into place. Their sides are still a bit malleable when they’re hot and fresh from the oven, but since these cookies set and firm up within minutes, work really quickly!
I secretly tried hoarding these healthy carrot cake oatmeal cookies, but that plan didn’t stand a chance around my hungry sweet-toothed family. Every time I walked by the counter, another one had mysteriously disappeared from the jar!
Oh well, at least we’re getting some extra veggies in… Right? 😉 And when you make your own, remember to snap a picture and share it on Instagram using #amyshealthybaking and tagging @amyshealthybaking IN the photo itself! (That guarantees I’ll see your picture! 🙂 ) I’d love to see your healthy carrot cake oatmeal cookies!
Healthy Carrot Cake Oatmeal Cookies
Ingredients
- 1 cup (100g) instant oats (measured like this and gluten-free if necessary)
- ¾ cup (90g) whole wheat flour or gluten-free* flour (measured like this)
- 1 ½ tsp baking powder
- 1 ½ tsp ground cinnamon
- ⅛ tsp salt
- 2 tbsp (28g) coconut oil or unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly
- 1 large egg (room temperature)
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- ½ cup (120mL) pure maple syrup (room temperature)
- ¾ cup (68g) freshly grated carrots (about 1 smallish medium, peeled first!)
Instructions
- In a medium bowl, whisk together the oats, flour, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt. In a separate bowl, whisk together the coconut oil or butter, egg, and vanilla. Stir in the maple syrup until thoroughly incorporated. Add in the flour mixture, stirring just until incorporated. Fold in the carrots. Chill the cookie dough for 30 minutes.
- Preheat the oven to 325°F, and line a baking sheet with a silicone baking mat or parchment paper.
- Using a spoon and spatula, drop the cookie dough into 14 rounded scoops on the baking sheet. Flatten slightly using a spatula. (These cookies don't spread very much!) Bake at 325°F for 12-15 minutes. Cool on the baking sheet for at least 15 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack.
Notes
View Nutrition Information + Weight Watchers Points
You may also like Amy’s other recipes…
♡ Ultimate Healthy Oatmeal Raisin Cookies
♡ Healthy Apple Pie Oatmeal Cookies
♡ Healthy Zucchini Oatmeal Cookies
♡ Healthy Banana Oatmeal Cookies
♡ Healthy Flourless Chocolate Oatmeal Cookies
♡ Ultimate Healthy Carrot Cake
♡ Healthy Carrot Cake Cupcakes
…and the rest of Amy’s healthy oatmeal cookie recipes and healthy carrot cake flavored recipes!
Just curious, when a baking recipe asks for egg…can you substitute for the appropriate equivalent of egg whites or are the yolks necessary? I ask for this recipe in particular but also in general as well.
In this recipe, as well as all of my other recipes, the yolk is necessary to achieve the proper texture. If you omitted the egg yolk in any of my cookie recipes, they would turn out cakey with a texture similar to muffins, rather than chewy like cookies. 🙂 I’m excited to hear what you think of these Kirsten!
Hi Amy,
These cookies look amazing! I can’t wait to bake up a batch(:
I Was just wondering if I can use regular all purpose flour instead of whole wheat/GF flour?
As I don’t have those on hand at the moment.
Thanks!
I answer that on my Oatmeal Cookie FAQ page, which is already linked to in the Notes section beneath the recipe. 🙂 I’m excited to hear what you think of the cookies Ella!
Thank you so much for a healthy cookie recipe, made them with my 5 year old daughter and they were more than a hit at my son’s baseball game !!
I’m so glad you and your family and friends enjoyed the cookies Lisa! That makes my heart so happy to hear, especially because baseball is actually my favorite sport (my dad and I are in the process of visiting all 30 MLB stadiums — we’ve been to 22 so far!). What position does your son play? 🙂
Do you like Play Dough? These cookies tasted like Play Dough when cooked following your recipe. These are the worst cookies I have ever made as far as gluten free! Sorry, but I think you need to go back to the drawing table and recreate the recipe.
That sounds really frustrating Bella Becka. That’s not how the cookies should turn out, so I’d love to work together to figure out what happened. Did you use my gluten-free blend included in the Notes section beneath the Instructions, and did you happen to make any substitutions for other ingredients? We’ll get to the bottom of this so we make sure your cookies turn out perfectly soft and chewy, not like Play-Doh! 🙂
I saw these on pinterest and thought they looked amazing. Too bad your website has so many ads that it crashed my computer twice. I can’t actually get the recipe to load because it bogs down my connection and won’t load. I understand that people have ads to make a little money on their websites, but this amount of ads is ridiculous. Sorry!
I made these cookies today and they are quite yummy! Not having ‘pure’ maple syrup around, I substituted the cheap probably-has-no-maple-but-still-tastes-pretty-good syrup that was hanging out in the pantry. (I also used white whole wheat flour and pre-cut matchstick carrots because that’s what I had.) The cookies were not at all sweet, so I mixed together some powdered sugar and the juice of half an orange to make a glaze and topped the cookies, making them a bit sweeter and sooo good! Thanks for a delicious, healthy recipe. 🙂
I’m so glad you enjoyed the cookies Kate! 🙂
Hi! Just satisfied a late-night baking itch with these – I used Doves Farm GF flour (the most commonly available here in the UK) and a small amount of xantham gum based on the flour mix you described at the bottom of your recipe as mine doesn’t automatically have it. The cookies didn’t flatten at all, so I ended up squishing them towards the end of the baking, and they’re really chewy – almost rubbery – after 15 minutes of baking. They taste great, and I can’t wait to try some of your other oatmeal cookie recipes 🙂 I’m interested to work out what (if anything) I did wrong with this batch – they seem to be fully cooked, but I’m not used to chewy cookies so I’m feeling in the dark a bit :p Maybe the xantham gum did something unexpected? Anyway, they’re great, and they’ll be a great help keeping my sweet tooth in check 😉
I’m really glad you enjoyed the cookies’ flavor Charlotte! I highly recommend reading over my Oatmeal Cookie FAQ Page (it’s already linked to in the Notes section beneath the Instructions!) because that covers some of your questions. Make sure you just use a fork or a spoon to mix together the cookie dough, rather than an electric mixer. Flatten the cookies to your desired thickness and width before baking, bake them for no longer than 13 minutes, and try using half as much xanthan gum. 🙂 I’m excited to hear how those tweaks turn out and what other oatmeal cookie recipes you try!
I love these cookies! They’ve never lasted long enough for me to try, but I was hoping to make a large batch for an event and Then freeze them so I can make them in advance. Do you know if they freeze and thaw well?
I’m so glad your loved ones are enjoying the cookies Kristen! Yes, these freeze really well. I hope you get to try some of the next batch! 🙂
A word to the wise. Since it was 3 AM and I didn’t want to run my blender and wake people up, I used old fashioned oats as is. I measured as above (like I do with flour and other dry ingredients from long practice) and everything was measured exactly. Unfortunately, my wee hours baking resulted in fairly dry cookies. Next time, I’ll make them at a more reasonable hour so I can whir the oats as instructed. Good flavor though! (A bit high on carbs for me too–am diabetic–but in moderation as a snack, they’ll work.)
That’s really considerate of you not to want to wake anyone up! I’m sure everyone really appreciated that. 🙂 I’m glad you enjoyed the flavor, and I can’t wait to hear how the next batch turns out with the blended oats! (There’s also a sugar-free option included on my Oatmeal Cookie FAQ page if you’d like to lower the carb content of these cookies!)
i read instant and quick oats are the same. No?
Yes, they are! I go over that in more detail on my Oatmeal Cookie FAQ page, which is linked to in the Notes section underneath the Instructions already. 🙂 I’m excited to hear what you think of the cookies Sarah!