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These caramel apple cookies are soft old-fashioned drop cookies loaded with bits of apple, sour cream and apple butter and warm Fall spices.

There’s so much cozy flavor in each bite. I love cookies that bake up like cake; they’re such a refreshing change from a crispy edged dunker. Next to a cup of coffee, I want one of these on my plate sitting down with friends in the afternoon.

These are the kind of cookies I want to take in a tin on an apple picking adventure. The homey flavors of cinnamon and nutmeg are what I want to eat when the crisp morning air of Fall blows in. Come Fall it’s all apple all the time, and I can’t think of a better way to kick of all the crazy apple baking recipes than these wonderful little caramel apple cookies.

So grab a jar of caramel sauce and let’s make a batch of Fall’s perfect cookie.

Caramel Apple Cookies

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caramel apple cookies on tray with text overlay

Why this isn’t your average apple cookie

Caramel: I will never stop looking for ways to use caramel sauce! It’s so luscious here drizzled over the top of the cookie and it adds some of the idea of the best caramel apple on a stick you love with less of the mess.
Double apple: bits of apple and rich apple butter boost the apple flavor, making for a fruity cookie that actually tastes like the fruit you’re adding to it.
Whiskey: Whiskey and apples plain just plum belong together. The alcohol bakes out, leaving flavor that is more appley than if you skipped it. Plus your kitchen will smell AMAZING.
SOFT: Cake soft cookies are a unique style. With pillowy tenderness, yet with a little bit of the buttery crisp edge just on the outside from a typical good cookie, these cookies are intriguing texturally.

Ingredients for Caramel Apple Butter Cookies

Butter
Brown Sugar
Egg
Apple flavored whiskey (or vanilla paste): I like Jack Daniel’s apple.
Apple: use a sweet variety that holds up well in baking like Gala or Pink Lady

All-purpose flour
Baking powder
Baking soda
Salt
Cinnamon
Nutmeg
Sour cream: adds tenderness
Apple butter: boosts the apple flavor (homemade apple butter is best)

A note about apple choices

I grew up picking apples straight off the tree. My uncle owns an apple orchard, and we almost always get apples from him every year. Most of the apples that make it to the store are pretty boring and tasteless, and they make my heart a little sad.

If I had my choice, I’d pick something delicious for these cookies like a Jonathan, Liberty or a Macintosh. Since I don’t have my own backyard apples, I’m pretty happy with Gala or Pink Lady as well. For the love of all that is good and holy, please use anything besides a Granny Smith when you bake with apples. They’re far too sharp without any of the nuance and balance of sweet tart apples like Jonathan or Macintosh.

Process for making caramel apple cookies

adding egg and whiskey to butter and brown sugar

Make the caramel: (you can use store-bought too, but the homemade is better!): use either the Vegan caramel sauce or the Honey Caramel from Chocolate Caramel Swirl Ice Cream. I always have a jar of one of the two in the fridge.
Prep: peel the apple and cut it into small pieces.
Spice: Mix the spices together, then toss the apple bits with some of the brown sugar and a good sized pinch of the spices. Mix the rest of the spices with the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
Cream: the butter and the rest of the brown sugar together. Add the egg and whiskey and mix into a creamy batter.
Alternate wet and dry ingredients: Alternate adding a little bit of the flour mixture with the sour cream and apple butter. Start and end with the flour mixture.
Fold: in the apples with a few turns of a spatula.
Scoop: 8 cookies to a sheet. You can use a spoon too, but I like using a 1 oz cookie scoop. If you make a lot of cookies, my Vollrath scoops have never failed. I’ve had many others break on me, but these guys are tough!
Flatten: you can keep the dough balls round, but I found in my tests that they’re a little better if you flatten them before they bake with lightly dampened hands.
Bake: bake until the bottoms of the cookies are lightly browned and the tops are slightly domed and set.
Drizzle: either pipe over lines of caramel or drizzle it onto each cookie from the end of a scoop.

How to make your caramel apple cookies better

scooping caramel apple cookie dough onto sheet trays

Don’t overcrowd: I’m specific in my cookie recipes about how many cookies to bake on a sheet for a reason. Cake style cookies will spread, and you don’t want them to bake into each other. Let them breathe by not baking them too closely to their neighbors.
Peel. The. Apple.: Consider me telling you this in all caps. Apple peels get tough in the oven, making for a texture difference between the peel and the apple flesh that is not pleasant to eat. I don’t care how pretty they are. Get rid of them and feed them to grateful chickens or your compost pile. Apple peels are for raw apples, not for these cookies or baked apples in general. No apple crimes, here. [End rant.]
Use a scoop: While you can absolutely drop balls of the dough onto the baking sheets with a spoon, a scoop is my tool of choice. It helps you get evenly sized cookies that bake at the same rate.
Let the caramel set: my caramel recipes will set, though you need to let the cookies sit at room temperature for a little while. When you can touch them without the caramel design coming off, you can place your cookies on whatever serving plate you’d like. If you pack them for the car, place them in a deep container. (I love these ones from Rubbermaid for cookies) with a piece of parchment in between layers.

Soft Caramel Apple Cookies

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Author: Elizabeth Farr
Total Time: 45 minutes
Yield: 24 cookies

Print Recipe

Description

Big puffy soft cookies with cozy cinnamon and nutmeg and chunks of sweet apple topped with caramel for the perfect Fall cookie.

Ingredients

Scale

1 stick butter (113 g), at room temperature
3/4 cup + 2 Tablespoons light brown sugar (173 g)
1 large egg, at room temperature
1 Tablespoon apple flavored whiskey or 1 tsp vanilla extract
2 and 1/4 cups all-purpose flour (292 g)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1/4 cup sour cream (60 g)
1/4 cup apple butter (68 g)–store bought or homemade apple butter
1 small sweet apple, such as Gala

Finishing the cookies

1/4 cup caramel sauce, preferably homemade

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Instructions

Preheat the oven to 350 F (180 C). Line 2 baking sheets with parchment.
Cream the butter and the 3/4 cup of brown sugar until it is light and fluffy. This will take about 2-3 minutes in a stand mixer or a hand mixer depending on how soft your butter is.
Scrape down the sides of the bowl, then mix in the egg and whiskey (or vanilla) until you have a smooth batter.
Grate the nutmeg into a small cup, then mix in the cinnamon.
Peel the apple and cut it into thin pieces about 1/4″ thick and 1/2″ long. Sprinkle the apples with the 2 Tablespoons of brown sugar and a 1/4 teaspoon of the cinnamon and nutmeg mixture.
Whisk the flour with the baking powder, baking soda, salt, the rest of the cinnamon and nutmeg in a small bowl to distribute the spices and leavening throughout the flour.
Alternate wet and dry ingredients.Add about one third of the flour mixture to the butter, then mix for a few seconds. It doesn’t need to be smooth. Next, add about half of the sour cream and half of the apple butter, mixing again for a few seconds. Continue alternating adding the flour and the sour cream/apple butter, ending with the flour. Be sure not to overbeat the mixture. No more than 5 seconds of beating with each addition is about right.
Scrape down the sides of the bowl and mix the batter a few turns by hand to make sure everything is well-incorporated.
Fold the apples into the batter with a few turns of the spatula.
Scoop 2 Tablespoons of batter onto your prepared sheets. Spread out the cookies well with no more than 8 cookies to a sheet.
Lightly dampen your hands with a few drops of water, then press down on the tops of the cookies to flatten them to about 1/2″ thick.
Bake the cookies for 15 minutes, rotating the pans top to bottom and spinning them 180 degrees halfway through baking. The finished cookies will be lightly browned on the bottom and the centers of the cookies will spring back when you lightly touch them.
Repeat the baking with the remaining batter.
Cool the cookies completely.
To finish them, warm the caramel sauce if necessary to a pipeable consistency. Either squeeze out lines of zigzag lines across the tops of the cookies or use a fork to drizzle caramel over the tops. Let the cookies sit at room temperature until the caramel sets.
Cookies are best the day that they’re made, though you can keep them in the fridge on the same cookie sheet you decorated them on for up to 3 days.