These delicious home-baked Hermit Cookies are soft and chewy, studded with raisins, and have a touch of spice and molasses to transport you to the holiday season. You can stir together a batch in just 15 minutes. The bonus is they actually get better after a day, so they’re a great make-ahead treat!
I originally shared this recipe on January 23, 2011. I have updated the images and some of the text today. This post contains affiliate links.
Why We Love This Recipe For Hermit Cookies
Old-fashioned Hermit cookies are one of my favorite New England treats, especially around the holidays! I love that they are so fast to whip together. Just combine the dry and wet ingredients, bake and cut. Really baking doesn’t get any easier than this!
According to the Food Lover’s Companion, Hermit Cookies are “better when hidden away like a hermit for several days.” In my house, they usually don’t last that long.
The Champlain Valley Cookbook, published in 1880, included one of the first known published Hermit recipes. It calls for ½ cup of lard and a lot of brown sugar, in addition to the spices and raisins.
My Healthy Hermits recipe is updated with avocado oil instead of lard and I used whole-wheat flour for a nutritional bonus. I like to sprinkle crunchy turbinado sugar on top for sparkle and texture.
Plus these bar cookies are vegan-friendly because they are made without eggs and can be made with plant-based milk.
Recipe Highlights
- Hermit cookies are so easy to make – just throw the combined ingredients in a pan and bake!
- This recipe is healthier than the original due to the addition of whole-wheat pastry flour.
- You can make these cookie bars for your vegan friends and impress them with your culinary prowess.
- They can be baked ahead because they are still moist and delicious on the second day.
- Hermit cookies are bursting with spicy autumnal goodness.
If you love these classic New England Hermit cookies, our Maple Apricot Hermit Cookies are a creative spin on this classic recipe!
Key Ingredients for This Recipe
- Flour: We used a blend of whole-wheat for added nutrition and white flour to give these bar cookies chewy rise.
- Molasses: For classic gingerbread flavor
- Spices: We used a blend of cinnamon and nutmeg, but feel free to add in a teaspoon of ground ginger to really amp up the holiday flavor.
- Milk: You can keep this recipe entirely plant-based and vegan by using a nut milk or plant milk of your choice or dairy milk works too.
- Raisins: Classic hermit cookies have raisins in them. Zante currants, dried cranberries or golden raisins would also work.
Step By Step Instructions To Make Healthy Hermit Cookies
Step 1: Preheat and Prep
Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F and coat a 9×13-inch baking dish with cooking spray.
Step 2: Combine Ingredients
Whisk the whole-wheat pastry flour, all-purpose flour, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt in a medium bowl until they’re all combined. Then, whisk together the sugar, oil, molasses, and milk (or soymilk) in another bowl. Add the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients gradually, stirring as you go, until all of the ingredients are combined.
Stir in the raisins and scrape the batter into the prepared pan. Sprinkle the top with turbinado sugar and transfer the pan to the oven.
Step 3: Bake and Cut
Bake your hermits until the dough is puffed and cracked, which should take about 25 minutes. Let the dish cool before cutting it into 24 squares.
FAQs and Expert Tips
Icing The Hermits
Some traditional hermit cookies are drizzled with icing. To ice these hermit cookies: mix together 1 cup confectioner’s sugar and 5 teaspoons to 2 tablespoons milk (plant based is fine) with a whisk or with an electric mixer until smooth. Drizzle over the hermits once they are cooled. Allow the icing to set up for about 45 minutes before slicing the hermit cookies into bars and serving.
These hermit cookies are bar cookies, which means they are baked in a brownie pan and then sliced into squares once they are cooled. Other hermit cookies are sometimes freezer cookies or slice-and-bake style doughs, but these are so easy to make this way, and the texture is perfect!
Turbinado sugar is raw sugar so it won’t melt into your cookie. It remains on top and gives the hermit cookie crunchy sweetness!
Once they are baked and cooled, cut the hermits into squares and store them in a resealable container. I like to layer parchment between them.
Hermit cookies have a similar flavor to gingerbread cookies, but hermits have dried fruits and sometimes nuts in them. Hermit cookies have a soft and chewy brownie-like texture.
You can store them at room temperature for 3 days, or freeze your hermit bars for up to 1 month.
Additional Recipes to Try
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Happy Cooking! ~Katie
Description
These Hermit Cookies are soft and chewy, studded with raisins and have a touch of spice and molasses. You can stir together a batch in just 15 minutes. Bonus is they actually get better after a day, so they’re a great make ahead treat!
- 1 ½ cup whole-wheat flour, white whole wheat flour or whole-wheat pastry flour
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon ground nutmeg
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- ¾ cup white sugar
- ½ cup avocado oil or organic canola oil
- ½ cup molasses
- ½ cup almond milk or soymilk
- 1 cup raisins
- 1 tablespoon turbinado sugar, such as Sugar in the Raw
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Coat a 9 x 13-inch baking dish with cooking spray.
- Whisk whole-wheat pastry flour, all-purpose flour, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt in a medium bowl until combined. Whisk sugar, oil, molasses and milk or soymilk in another medium bowl. Stir the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients until combined. Stir in raisins. Scrape into the prepared pan. Sprinkle with turbinado sugar and transfer to the oven.
- Bake until puffed and cracked, about 25 minutes. Let cool before cutting into 24 squares. Layer hermits between pieces of parchment in a re-sealable container. Store at room temperature for 3 days or freeze up to 1 month.
Notes
Once they are baked and cooled, cut the hermits into squares and store them in a resealable container. I like to layer parchment between them. You can store them at room temperature for 3 days, or freeze your hermit bars for up to 1 month.
- Prep Time: 15 minutes
- Cook Time: 25 minutes
- Category: Dessert
- Method: Oven
- Cuisine: American
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 1 bar cookie
- Calories: 150
- Sugar: 15 g
- Sodium: 107 mg
- Fat: 4.8 g
- Saturated Fat: 0 g
- Carbohydrates: 27 g
- Fiber: 1 g
- Protein: 2 g
Keywords: hermit cookies ,Hermit Cookie Recipe, Healthy Hermits, vegan hermit cookies,hermit bar cookies
About the Author
Katie Webster
Katie Webster studied art and photography at Skidmore College and is a graduate of the New England Culinary Institute. She has been a professional recipe developer since 2001 when she first started working in the test kitchen at EatingWell magazine. Her recipes have been featured in numerous magazines including Shape, Fitness, Parents and several Edible Communities publications among others. Her cookbook, Maple Quirk Books was published in 2015. She launched Healthy Seasonal Recipes in 2009. She lives in Vermont with her husband, two teenage daughters and two yellow labs. In her free time, you can find her at the gym, cooking, stacking firewood, making maple syrup, and tending to her overgrown perennial garden.