No bake Haystack Cookies are a delicious cookie to make for the holiday season. They are perfectly sweet and chewy made with simple ingredients, and an easy treat to make for friends and family.
This haystacks recipe is such a simple way to make a sweet treat when you need an easy recipe and is always a huge hit at holiday parties or when given as a holiday gift for Christmas time, perfect for this time of year.
You won’t need anything crazy like a double boiler to get the right texture for these Christmas cookies. It is an easy peasy cookie recipe that you will enjoy making.
Recipe Ingredients:
- Coconut: use unsweetened coconut flakes
- Sugar: you will need to use dark brown sugar for the best flavor
- Cocoa: to make the chocolate haystacks you will need to use unsweetened cocoa powder
- Butter: use unsalted butter or omit the salt if you only have salted butter
- Milk: choose the milk you already have in your fridge
- Salt: either kosher salt or sea salt will work great
- Extract: grab a bottle of vanilla extract from the grocery store
- Oats: you will need to make sure you are using quick-cooking oats to get the right texture
- Nuts: add in chopped peanuts or desired nuts
How To Make Haystack Cookies:
- Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside.
- First, start by toasting your coconut flakes. Add coconut flakes to a large skillet and set over medium-low heat. Cook the coconut for 3-5 minutes stirring constantly until the coconut is golden brown. Set the coconut flakes aside to cool.
- While the coconut is cooling, add dark brown sugar, cocoa powder, unsalted butter, milk, and a pinch of salt in a medium-sized saucepan.
- Cook, stirring until the sugar is dissolved and the mixture starts to come to a low boil. Remove from the heat and stir in vanilla.
- Add quick oats, toasted coconut, and chopped peanuts. Stir until well combined.
- While the mixture is still warm, drop the cookies by a rounded tablespoon onto the prepared baking sheet.
- Place the cookies in the refrigerator for 30 minutes before serving.
Expert Tips
- I suggest toasting the coconut flakes, as the toasted coconut has deep caramel and malty notes.
- For this recipe you can use quick cooking oats, but not instant oats. The instant oats will give you very fine and almost mushy cookies. You can also try the regular rolled oats, but haystack cookies made with rolled oats will be chewier. The quick-cooking oats are a perfect cross of these two, as they will absorb moisture at a moderate rate, maintaining their shape better, but with a little less chewiness than classic rolled oats have.
- For easy cookie shaping, use a small ice cream scoop or cookie scoop to place the no bake chocolate oatmeal cookies on the wax paper. It works better than the tablespoon.
Frequently asked questions when making Haystack Cookies:
They are delicious no bake cookies that are made into the shape of real stacks of hay. You will use a combination of ingredients to create the haystack cookie recipe.
Nope! If you choose to use noodles in this recipe, you will use crunchy chow mein noodles to get the right texture for the little haystacks.
I wouldn’t use another type of noodle, but you could use cornflakes to still get the texture for the no bake haystacks.
Generally, this would mean that you did not cook the sugar mixture in the chocolate haystack cookies for long enough. The sugar need to boil just long enough to get the mixture to a consistency to set up once cooled. This will happen around 230 degrees F if you are using a candy thermometer.
The opposite of having gooey cookies, you may have cooked the sugar mixture in the haystack cookie recipe for too long. Thus making the cookies crumbly.
The other option is that something wasn’t measured properly and there were too many dry ingredients to mix into the wet ingredients.
Add-ins for no bake recipe:
- Festive holiday sprinkles (in or on top of the cookies)
- Milk chocolate chips
- Mini marshmallows
- Spanish peanuts
- Peanut butter chips
- White chocolate chips
- Dark chocolate chips
Storage Instructions:
Counter: Place the haystack candy into an airtight container or cookie box for your cookie exchange and store them on the counter for 4-5 days. Or place them in the fridge for up to 10 days.
Other holiday candy recipes:
- Homemade Microwave Caramels
- Christmas Crack
- Butterscotch Bird Nest Treats
- Double Decker Chocolate Peanut Butter Fudge
Haystack Cookies
Ingredients
- ½ cup coconut flakes
- 1 cup dark brown sugar
- 3 Tablespoon unsweetened cocoa powder
- ¼ cup butter (unsalted)
- ¼ cup milk
- 1 pinch of salt
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 ¾ cup quick cooking oats
- ¼ cup chopped peanuts, (or desired nuts)
Instructions
- Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside.
- First, start by toasting your coconut flakes. Add coconut flakes to a large skillet and set over medium-low heat. Cook the coconut for 3-5 minutes stirring constantly until the coconut is golden brown. Set the coconut flakes aside to cool.
- While the coconut is cooling, add dark brown sugar, cocoa powder, unsalted butter, milk, and a pinch of salt in a medium-sized saucepan.
- Cook, stirring until the sugar is dissolved and the mixture starts to boil. Remove from the heat and stir in vanilla.
- Add quick-cooking oats, toasted coconut, and chopped peanuts. Stir until well combined.
- While the mixture is still warm, drop the cookies by a rounded tablespoon onto the prepared baking sheet.
- Place the cookies in the refrigerator for 30 minutes before serving.
Notes
Nutrition
Did You Make This Recipe?We’d love to hear your thoughts! Leave a review or a question in the comment section below the post.
We had no leftovers – this was absolutely delicious!