Some cookies are for a quiet Tuesday, and some are for the moment you actually want to win someone over. Marry Me Cookies are the second kind. Browned butter, two kinds of chocolate, and a handful of oats give them a chewy texture with crispy edges. And for all that, they’re not complicated to make!
Ingredient Notes
- The salted butter combined with the bit added salt is balanced to work in this recipe. If you only have unsalted, the cookies taste a little flat, so add an extra pinch of salt.
- Your oats change the cookie more than you’d think. Old-fashioned rolled oats hold their shape and give you a chewy, sturdy cookie. Quick oats technically work but they soak up more moisture, giving you a softer, flatter cookie.
Cookie Variations
- If you like what the oats do here, I use the same old-fashioned rolled oats in my oatmeal chocolate chunk cookies.
- If you’d rather skip the browned butter and oats, my Tollhouse chocolate chip cookies are the straightforward version.
- These use the same white chips I reach for in my cranberry white chocolate cookies, so grab an extra bag if you plan to make both.
- If you go the pecan route, I worked out how many nuts the dough can take without crowding it in my DoubleTree cookies.
Watch This Step
The butter is what makes or breaks these cookies. Stir it constantly and the second it smells nutty and turns the color of a penny, pull it off the heat. The pan is still hot, so the butter keeps darkening for a few seconds after, which is why you stop a little early.
Right after you stir the sugar and melted butter together, the bowl is too warm to add eggs. You’ll need to chill it in the fridge. If you add eggs while the bowl is still warm, the eggs cook on contact and streak through the dough.
Make-Ahead
You can freeze the baked cookies, but you can also freeze the dough already scooped. Set the balls on a tray until they’re solid, bag them up, and bake them straight from frozen for a couple of extra minutes. That’s how I keep a few on hand for when I only want one or two.
The dough chills before baking, so I can mix it ahead and bake cookies whenever I want them.
Storage
Drop a slice of plain white bread in the container with the cookies. They pull moisture from the bread instead of from themselves, so they stay soft a lot longer. Swap the bread when it dries out.
Recipe Test Notes – Updated May 2026
I keep the chill on this dough short on purpose, and testing is the reason. When I had my independent recipe tester, Teresia, make this recipe, she left hers in the fridge about 4 hours. The butter firmed up so much that the dough was hard to scoop, and the oats baked in unevenly, standing out in some cookies more than others. She softened the dough, scooped it again, and that batch came out with the oats worked through evenly. So a short chill is all you need. If you do leave it longer, soften the dough before you scoop and you’ll get the same result.
The name is a nod to Marry Me Chicken, and if you want to lean into the theme, there’s a Marry Me Chicken Pasta for the main course and these Marry Me Cookies to finish.
Marry Me Cookies
Ingredients
- 1 cup salted butter, sliced into pats
- 1 ¼ cup light brown sugar, tightly packed
- ½ cup granulated sugar
- 2 large eggs, room temperature
- 1 large egg yolk, room temperature
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- 2 cups all purpose flour, spoon and leveled
- 1 ¼ cup old fashioned rolled oats
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- ¼ teaspoon kosher salt
- ¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1 ¼ cup semi sweet chocolate chips
- 1 ¼ cup white baking chips
Instructions
- In a small saucepan over medium low heat, melt the butter pats while stirring constantly. As the butter cooks, it will start to foam and begin to change color from yellow to a golden brown. Once the butter turns golden brown, the butter will very quickly turn a rich brown and will have a nutty aroma. Remove from the heat and let cool for 3 to 4 minutes.
- Add the light brown sugar and granulated sugar to a medium size heat safe mixing bowl.
- Pour the browned butter over the sugars and whisk until well incorporated. Cover and chill in the refrigerator for 10 minutes.
- In another medium size mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, oats, baking soda, kosher salt and cinnamon and set aside.
- Remove the mixing bowl from the refrigerator and stir in the room temperature eggs, egg yolk and vanilla until well combined.
- Gradually stir in the flour mixture, mixing well after each addition, until well combined.
- Fold in both the semi-sweet chocolate and white chocolate baking chips. (The dough will be very thick, so really make sure the chips are well incorporated)
- Cover and chill in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.
- Preheat the oven to 325°F. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mat.
- Use a 2 tablespoon cookie scoop to scoop out the cookie dough, spacing 2 inches apart. (If a smaller scoop is used, you will get more cookies.)
- Bake for 11 to 13 minutes, just until the edges turn golden brown.
- Let the cookies rest for just a few minutes before transferring to a cooling rack to cool completely.
Notes
- The dough will be very thick, so really make sure the chips are well incorporated before placing it in the fridge.
- Note the longer the dough chills, the harder it will get because of the butter. The 30-minute chill time is recommended. Leaving it overnight will make it harder to scoop out the cookie dough.
- If the dough is refrigerated longer or overnight, then allow the dough to set out about 30 minutes to soften before scooping out the cookies.
- If your oven bakes hot, then decrease the baking time to about 10-12 minutes to produce that slightly crisp edge with a nice soft center.
Nutrition
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