Cinnamon Apple Cookies Recipe

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Pumpkin spice overload? Try these autumn-inspired cookies

Cinnamon Apple Cookies

It’s fall! Time for all things sugar and spice – fall is my season for baking! I love trying to figure out new recipes and ways to wedge apples (and yes, pumpkins too) into pretty much any kind of baked good.

My latest attempt is this recipe for Cinnamon Apple Cookies. I was looking for a softer cookie that I could grab with tea on a cool, fall morning while enjoying the foliage. These cookies have the perfect balance of cinnamon and apple and I hope you enjoy these as much as I do!

leaves changing colorsThese yummy cookies only enhance this gorgeous view!

Cinnamon Apple Cookies
Yields 3 dozen cookies
Ingredients

• 2 ½ cups flour
• 1 tsp. baking powder
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1 heaping T. of cinnamon
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1/2 cup light brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 cup dried, chopped apples (I prefer Bob’s Red Mill brand)
• 1/2 cup plain, unsweetened apple sauce
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• 1-2 T. of water or apple cider

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2. Put one cup of dried, chopped apples into a bowl and stir in applesauce. Pat mixture flat into bowl, so apples are evenly coated with applesauce, and let sit for at least 20 minutes.

Tip: This step will rehydrate the apples so you don’t get a weird, spongy texture. Some people might wonder why I don’t use fresh apples. The answer is “because I’m lazy and peeling and grating a bazillion apples sounds like torture.” Plus, these chopped apples are the perfect morsels for cookies.

3. Combine flour, baking powder and soda, salt, and cinnamon in a medium bowl, whisk together until evenly blended.

4. Whip butter in mixing bowl. Add white and brown sugars. Beat until fluffy.

5. Add egg, apple mixture, and vanilla. Beat until fluffy (about 1 minute on medium speed).

6. Slowly mix in dry ingredients. I’ve noticed when I use a hand mixer, the dough seems dry, so I add about 2 T. apple cider or water to moisten the dough at this stage. When I’m using my stand mixture, I only need about 1 T. of liquid. Mix until dough is thoroughly combined.

7. Line baking sheets with parchment paper. Uusing a cookie scoop or rounded tablespoon, drop 6 balls of dough per cookie sheet.

8. Bake for about 17 minutes, until golden around edges. Remove from oven, let cool on baking sheet for one minute, then remove to a cooling rack.

Cinnamon Apple Cookies recipe

Once completely cool, place cookies in a cookie tin or sealed container and let them sit for at least 6 hours. Trust me on this – it gives the flavors time to mingle and the cookie becomes nice and soft and the flavor of the cookie really comes through after this resting period. These become almost a completely different cookie from the ones that came out of the oven.

we heartsters – what are your favorite fall flavors?

photos: krista for we heart this

Krista resides in the middle of nowhere with her bff/hubby, an obscenely big-eared dog, and a puppy that makes feral capuchins seem mellow. She has an irrational fear of ax murder, owns more than one machete for home defense/the zombie apocalypse, and goes to sleep serenaded by the sounds of the Chupagobbler, a mythical turkey beast that roams the woods around her house. She also has an obsessive love of Tom Selleck’s moustache that is, quite frankly, alarming.
skin tone: NW15
skin type: sensitive/oily
favorite beauty product: Blush, lots and lots of blush

Author

  • krista

    Lives in the middle of nowhere with her amazing hubby and two codependent dogs that love to hate each other. She enjoys dance parties of one and last minute road trips, prays for Angela Lansbury's immortality and can never own enough blush. She averages one "Silence of the Lambs" quote a week and feels no shame over this. Perhaps she should. skin tone: NW15 skin type: sensitive/oily favorite beauty product: Blush, lots and lots of blush

16 Comments

  1. those look soooo delicious is it bad that I’m salivating over them sitting here at my desk at work? Sorry, they look that appetizing!

  2. Cinnamon is really the fume of the autumn, that’s why I love this season so much… and the smell of the chestnut, oh my god I love it so much! Unfortunately I am too dumb to cook or bake some wonderful things like above, but I have a really amazing wife who can make all the sweeties for me! I’ve just bookmarked your post to tell her what the next project should be;) best, Peter

  3. These look amazing! I love pumpkin flavored things, but I think apple totally gets the short end of the stick sometimes. I am def going to give these a try!

  4. These look amazing @krista! I am so in a baking mood now! I love apple and cinnamon together! You cannot go wrong with that pairing! Thank YOU!!!

  5. Looks like I know what I will be baking this weekend… While I love the scent up pumpkin, I’m not the biggest fan texturally or of the taste. Apple is far superior!

  6. These look so yummy! I am NOT a pumpkin fan, so these would be a welcome respite from the deluge of pumpkin flavored EVERYTHING that is going on right now! :-)
    If we did use real apples, are there any recipe adjustments that would need to be made? I’m assuming not, since you re-hydrate the dried apples, but I don’t want any mishaps if I decide to use up my apples this weekend…

    1. @lyssachelle – I have yet to make these with regular apples, but I’d say go for about 1 to 1 1/2 cups finely chopped apples. I’d say go shredded, but the chopped gives a nice morsel shape in these cookies.
      Let me know how they turn out, m’kay? :)

  7. It’s creeping up on midnight here and ALL I want is a plateful of these cookies and a glass of milk. (And if we are granting wishes I would like to get a great night’s sleep and wake up to a plateful of these cookies for breakfast!)

    Well done @krista – these look delish. I love cinnamon and too few cookie recipes use it. Will be trying this recipe out soon. Also? Thanks for using dried, pre-chopped apples – the cutting and coring of fresh apples would scare me off of attempting that recipe. I’m lazy too too!

    1. @tyna – Lazy bakers of the world UNITE! :)
      I’m lazy, but if I thought these cookies required fresh apples, I’d use them, but the dried apples rehydrated in apple sauce work SO WELL, there’s no need for all that fuss.

  8. These look awesome @krista! I swear I can envision my teeth sinking into the perfect soft, chewy bite just looking at the pile of them!

    Super envious of your beautiful fall view!

  9. I don’t think Pumpkin Spice overload is real. It’s not a thing. It doesn’t exist.

    Seriously ;)

    I have been on a pumpkin beer kick lately, and can’t get enough. However, that doesn’t mean there isn’t ALSO room for delicious cinnamon apple cookies…

    1. @lipglossandspandex – I’ve never grown tired of pumpkin spice anything, I just like to pay proper attention to our friend, the apple.

      As for pumpkin beer, try Harpoon Brewery’s UFO Pumpkin. It’s the best the hubs and I have tried thus far and I am not a beer drinker. It’s downright yummy.

  10. @krista – So, if you use fresh apples, how many would you use and do you axe the applesauce? We are not the “we buy dried apples” variety. If I buy apples, we buy them fresh and I usually bake them into pies (or I buy the sliced ones and I eat the whole bag within a day. I am an apple fiend.) I find something very zen-y about slicing and dicing apples!

    1. @katezena – I’ve never used fresh apples to make this and came up with the recipe using dried. I would definitely skip the applesauce–that was used to rehydrate the dried apples so they didn’t have a spongy texture. I mentioned before that you’re looking at using about 1-1/2 cups of apple–I guess that would be about 2 apples finely chopped up, depending on the size of the apple? I’d also recommend you use a more tart and solid apple–I bet Granny Smiths or Ginger Golds would be good in these. I would say don’t use Red Delicious–those always turn to mush when I’ve tried to bake with them.

      That being said, I’m not sure if using fresh apples will give the identical results as the rehydrated dry apples give, but hello, it’s apples and cinnamon in cookie form, so it should still be tasty.

      I hope that helped! :)

    2. @krista I always use Granny Smiths! Nothing turns out right if I don’t use those! It doesn’t help that I love them too!

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