Apple Cinnamon Oatmeal Cookies - Sally's Baking Addiction (2024)

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These soft and chewy apple cinnamon oatmeal cookies are exploding with sweet apple flavor. Filled with cinnamon and apple spices, loaded with applesauce and apple chunks, and topped with a creamy maple frosting, they’re absolutely perfect for the fall season.

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In the fall months, apple desserts are often overshadowed by pumpkin pie and all things pumpkin spice. While these soft pumpkin cookiesalways hit the spot, today’s apple cinnamon oatmeal cookies have climbed to the top of my fall cookie list.

Speaking of favorite desserts, have you tried salted caramel apple pieyet? It’s my #1.

Tell Me About these Apple Cinnamon Oatmeal Cookies

• Texture: These apple cinnamon oatmeal cookies are soft and chewy with moist centers and crisp edges. They’re much softer and more airy than our oatmeal chocolate chip cookiesand oatmeal raisin cookies. Each is loaded with apple chunks and topped with creamy frosting. So much texture in just 1 cookie!
• Flavor: You’ll enjoy many fall flavors in each bite including apple spice, cinnamon, and maple—same flavors you can find in these healthy apple muffins. If you’re looking for a maple cookie to try, these maple brown sugar cookies are a popular choice.
• Time: The apple oatmeal cookie dough comes together quickly. Some cookie doughs require chilling in the refrigerator and others don’t. This recipe doesn’t, but some readers have found chilling the dough helpful because it helps reduce over-spreading. (We don’t usually chill the dough, but see step 1 below.)

Apple Cinnamon Oatmeal Cookies: What Works & What Doesn’t

Here are a few helpful tips my team & I learned while testing this recipe.

1. Use this trick for melted butter. The first ingredient is melted butter, but the temperature is important. If it’s too hot, the dough will turn into an oily puddle. If it’s too cool, your cookies will taste a little too cakey. Here’s what we do: melt the butter and set it aside for 10 minutes while we prep the rest of the ingredients. It’s still warm, but not piping hot. Perfect!
2. Bake right away. The oats will soak up a lot of the moisture if you let the cookie dough sit too long. This isn’t a bad thing, but we find the centers are much softer if the dough sits. You’ll get a better cookie if you bake them right away. Impatience finally pays off!
3. Next day flavor wins. Even though you want to bake the cookies right away, eating them is another story. Like banana bread, these cookies have even more flavor on the 2nd day… if you can wait that long to eat them!

Choosing the Right Ingredients

Here are some of the key ingredients in apple cinnamon oatmeal cookies.

• More oats than flour = chewier cookie. You need 2 cups of whole oats and 1 cup of flour to achieve the perfect chew.
• Sugars. You’ll need both granulated sugar and brown sugar in this recipe. We prefer dark brown sugar this time of year, though light brown sugar works just as well.
• Applesauce. While applesauce can make cookies taste a little rubbery, the melted butter keeps their chewy texture in check. We recommend using a thick unsweetened applesauce to prevent overspreading. Avoid thin and soupy applesauce. And if you have any leftover, try a batch of these applesauce muffins.
• Walnuts. We love adding walnuts to these apple cookies, but you can leave them out if desired. The nuts are completely optional.
• Apple chunks. Make sure you cut the apple into very tiny chunks—not slices like I recommend for apple pie. I use only 1/2 cup for the cookies—you don’t want to use much more than that because the dough will be too moist.
• Spices. I recommend using apple pie spice and cinnamon. If you don’t have access to store-bought apple pie spice, use a little extra cinnamon or you can make your ownwith cinnamon, cardamom, and nutmeg. If you have and love apple pie spice, you’ll enjoy it in these baked apple cider donuts too!

A drizzle of maple icing is the perfect finishing touch to these cookies. But if you have a little more time, salted caramel frosting would be equally as delicious!

More Fall Baking Recipes

• Apple Cinnamon Babka
• Orange Cranberry Bread
• Apple Cinnamon Muffins
• Pumpkin Bars
• Apple Cupcakes with Salted Carmel Frosting
• Caramel Apple Spice Thumbprints

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