Now, there may be different schools of thought on this, but in my opinion, the perfect oatmeal cookie recipe makes a soft and chewy cookie. The most common mistakes for bakers making soft and chewy oatmeal cookies are overbaking and using the wrong oats. I’ll put a list of common issues—and their solutions—below for troubleshooting oatmeal cookies at home.

If your cookies are coming out of the oven different than you expected, don’t fret! Just keep baking and enjoy them for what they are. It’s hard to remediate a dough that’s already finished, so just keep these tips and tricks in mind for your next batch.

My oatmeal cookies are dry, crumbly, or falling apart.

Old-fashioned rolled oats are the key ingredient here—they give these cookies their signature chewy texture. Quick oats can make them too dry, and steel-cut oats won’t soften properly. Use old-fashioned rolled oats. No substitutes!

My oatmeal cookies are too flat.

This often happens when the butter is too soft or the dough wasn’t chilled before baking. Warm dough spreads quickly in the oven. Next time, refrigerate your dough for at least 30 minutes before baking, and make sure your butter is softened—not melted—when mixing.

My oatmeal cookies are too fluffy or cakey.

This one can be a little trickier to troubleshoot. If your cookies are very fluffy, it could mean there’s too much flour—using the correct technique to measure out your flour is really important. Always spoon your flour into your measuring cup, then use the flat side of a butter knife or spatula to level it off. That’s called the “spoon and level method.” Too much flour can make your cookies dense or cakey instead of soft and chewy.

Super cakey or fluffy cookies can also be a result of overbeating the eggs (which incorporates extra air) or adding too much leavener (in this case, baking soda). If the latter is true, you’ll probably be able to taste it.

My oatmeal cookies came out crispy or crunchy.

This can happen if you leave them in the oven a few minutes too long. Oatmeal cookies firm up as they cool, so pull them out when the centers still look slightly soft. If you like a chewy cookie, trust me: You want to underbake them a tiny bit and let that leftover heat from the baking sheet finish the job.

Every cookie is different. I should know—I bake thousands of them every year, and I wrote an entire cookbook just about cookies! In any case, it would be impossible to list every mistake for every kind of cookie dough here, so I’ll just share a few.

Using butter that’s too warm is one issue—it causes cookies to spread out in the oven. Of course, that’s only for cookie doughs that use solid butter. Of course there are some that use melted butter too! Another common one is overbaking. If your cookies are coming out crunchy or burnt, you know you’ve overbaked them. On the other hand, underbaking could leave you with a doughy little mess. And like I said before, measuring your ingredients accurately is very important!

If you want to learn more and level up your baking technique, make sure to grab a copy of A Gift of Cookies: Recipes to Share with Family and Friends. I’ll say a little more about the book at the end of this article, too.

This recipe was inspired by my friends over at Williams Sonoma Lake Forest.

On my last visit (after a little shopping spree), the staff sent me home with a jar of their incredible pumpkin butter. One spoonful and I knew I had to bake something special with it! Thank you so much, Williams Sonoma!