This cookie recipe comes to you a little bit late, but juuuuuust in time for Christmas. Better late than never I always say!
Every year, our neighborhood hosts a holiday cookie exchange, and I’m constantly on the hunt for new cookie recipes to try. Luckily, this year, I happened upon this Brussels cookies recipe on Food52. I made some slight changes and adaptations, and I have to tell you, I think it’s my favorite one yet.
If you’re already familiar with Brussels Cookies, a certain crispy, chocolatey Pepperidge Farm favorite, you’ll be surprised at how easy they are to make at home. You only need 9 simple ingredients, and you’ll get buttery, crispy, slightly chewy thin oatmeal cookies, sandwiched together with a gooey layer of chocolate in the center. They’re perfect with a tall glass of milk or a warm mug of hot cocoa. And if you want to make these even more flavorful, you can add orange or peppermint extract to the melted chocolate.
One final note before we get started. You’ll see that the recipe calls for “ground oat bran.” This is what gives these cookies their signature texture. You can buy oat bran at some grocery stores, where you find other specialty flours.
But I just took steel-cut oats and ground them into a coarse flour using my blender, and it worked great! You could certainly try grinding regular old-fashioned rolled oats, but I’m not sure if they’d be coarse enough to give these cookies the right texture. For more holiday cookie ideas, check out our Chinese Walnut Cookies, Matcha Bacon Sugar Cookies, Chock Full o’ Nuts Chocolate Chip Cookies, and Cranberry Orange Cookies.
Ok, on to the recipe!
Recipe Instructions
Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. In a bowl, cream the sugar and butter until light and fluffy, about 2-3 minutes. Stir in the vanilla and milk. In a separate bowl, mix together the flour, oat bran, baking powder and salt. Gradually mix the dry ingredients into the butter mixture until well blended.
Scoop rounds (1 teaspoon for 2-inch cookies, or more if you want the cookies to be bigger) and place on parchment-lined baking sheets, 3 inches apart.
Bake for 11-12 minutes, until the cookies are golden around the edges. Cool completely (they’ll flatten as they cool).
Set up a double boiler to completely melt the chocolate.
Take a cookie, add about a teaspoon of melted chocolate to the flat side, and sandwich with another.
Set aside to let the chocolate set and continue until all the cookies are assembled.
Chocolate Oatmeal Sandwich Cookies (Brussels Cookies Recipe)
Ingredients
- ½ cup sugar (plus 2 tablespoons/18g)
- 7 tablespoons butter (at room temperature)
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 3 tablespoons milk
- ½ cup all purpose flour
- ½ cup ground oat bran (or steel cut oats, ground into a flour in a blender)
- 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 8 oz. dark or semisweet chocolate chips
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. In a bowl, cream the sugar and butter until light and fluffy, about 2-3 minutes. Stir in the vanilla and milk. In a separate bowl, mix together the flour, oat bran, baking powder and salt. Gradually mix the dry ingredients into the butter mixture until well blended.
- Scoop rounds (1 teaspoon for 2-inch cookies, or more if you want the cookies to be bigger) and place on parchment-lined baking sheets, 3 inches apart. Bake for 11-12 minutes, until the cookies are golden around the edges. Cool completely (they’ll flatten as they cool).
- Set up a double boiler to completely melt the chocolate. Take a cookie, add about a teaspoon of melted chocolate to the flat side, and sandwich with another. Set aside to let the chocolate set and continue until all the cookies are assembled.
Dang, I love the real thing and have always wondered if they could be made at home. NEXT!!!
These are pretty close, Nancy, I have to say!
Love the recipes on this site. Always come here for inspiration and to hone my cooking skills with your super-useful tips and tricks to hone those authentic dishes. One thing that would be useful for your recipes is an easy way to convert to metric, especially for those people not in North America :-). Thanks and keep up the good work!
Thank you for that, Pete! We do have metric measures on our more recent recipes, but this one was missing them! Now, in the recipe card, you should see a “metric” button below the ingredients list.
How about fruit/jam filling? I love chocolate but sometimes want something different.
Will be making these soon.
A jam filling would be lovely in these, Zanne! I would just simmer the jam to reduce it and thicken it up a bit before sandwiching it in the cookies, or the jam will squeeze out and the cookies might not hold together.
Why is there no longer the option to email these amazing recipes. I recently lost my hard-drive and with it, all my Works of Life recipes. I love the authenticity, the ingredient information, and the back-stories, but miss being able to email the recipes to myself.
Can you help?
Hi JoAnn, you can email them to yourself by clicking on the little mailbox icon on the left side of the page on any recipe.
I keep all my recipes on Evernote. You can go into Evernote on any phone/tablet/laptop etc. It doesn’t live on your computer, it’s on their server. You’ll never lose anything again. I’ve been using it for a decade. I even have a tag for Woks of Life so I can go right to their recipes. And you will have an Evernote email address so you can send ANYTHING to your Evernote account.
Thank you for sharing this tip with other readers, Zanne! Love this!
Can you clarify if it’s ok to be using oat bran flour, or is it oat bran I need to use? I made these yesterday and the flavor was great, but the texture and ‘spreading ‘out did not quite work out well, so I was wondering if that was the difference. if I’m oat bran flour, I was not sure if the proportions stay the same. Thank you so much! I’ve been enjoying the many recipes on this site since I discovered this site during COVID!
Hi Shar, it’s oat bran flour (ground oat bran). I will definitely update the recipe to make that more clear!
Thanks for an awesome recipe! I have been craving these!!! used blitzed steel cut oats for the oat bran. Will probably reduce the sugar next time, it was a tad too sweet for us.
You’re welcome, Scott! And yes, definitely feel free to reduce the sugar if you prefer!
Ahhh i’ve been trying to find the perfect oatmeal cookie sandwich recipe and i think i found the one! Only problem is that oat bran is hard to come across where i live. Is it possible to substitute oat bran with quick cooking oats? Or would rolled oats be a better substitute? Hope to hear from you soon!
Hey Rica, I mentioned in the course of the post that I actually just used steel-cut oats that I then ground into a coarse flour using my blender! Steel-cut oats are pretty easy to find, but if you can’t get them you could try doing the same thing with rolled oats. Just not sure if they would have a coarse enough texture. But it’s worth a shot. Let us know how it goes if you try it!
We had so many cookies this year, we though they were enough. We made 3 batches of kourabiedes and 2 of melomakarona. And then, we see this post. How are we supposed to resist?:) We’ll have to use rolled oats though, as they’re the only available option. Let’s cross our fingers:)
Thank you for the superb recipe!
xoxoxo
Oh, boy! My fave cookies and finally I can make them from scratch! Thanks for posting this recipe. We’ve been eating them all day.
Happy New Year and keep up the great work!
So glad you liked them Rachel!
This cookies look so good I’m gonna have to make them really soon….
YES! I still have a few leftover from earlier in the week, and they are still perfect in every way. Had one for dessert just a few hours ago!