These. are. AMAZING. Personally, I’m not a fan of baking pies. I’d much rather make cookies – which take half the amount of time! These, literally, taste like apple pie and caramel apples mixed together! Way too addicting.
I needed to come up with a recipe – fast! I attempted twice to make these work. I tried pureeing the apples, but only to find that made it difficult to work with the dough and much harder to taste the apple. I tried stuffing the cookies with the caramel, only to make a gigantic mess. The third time, I came up with the perfect amount of apple to cookie ratio and the perfect way to add the caramel into the mix!
The type of caramel I made is super simple and more of a sauce. If you wanted to make real caramel, you need to add heavy cream and butter. But, I’m all about using the least amount of ingredients possible and believe me, you won’t notice that the heavy cream and butter are missing! If you are in a super rush, and don’t have the 10 minutes to make my version, you can buy caramel sauce in a store. But first, do the math. You’ll probably pay $5 for a container, where if you make it at home with just 1 3/4 cup of sugar, it’ll cost you like… $.50. Save where you can, people!
For caramel:
1 3/4 cup of sugar
2/3 cup of water
1/3 cup of hot water
For sugar cookies:
1 cup butter
2/3 cup sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp salt
2 1/2 cup flour
1 granny smith apple, diced
2 tsp flour
2 tsp cinnamon
Pinch of salt
In a heavy bottomed sauce pan, add 1 3/4 cup of sugar and 2/3 of a cup of water. Stir on medium heat, and when the mixture boils, that means the sugar has completely dissolved into the water. Take out the spatula, you will NOT be using it again. Leave it boiling on medium heat and every 30 second to a minute, use the pot handle to swish the mixture around. Caramel is just burned sugar. It’s about a 10 minute process for it to burn. It will look like nothing is happening, but be patient, because all of the sudden, you’ll see it turn a light amber color! Give it a few more seconds, let it get a bit more brown, and then turn off the heat. Now add 1/3 of a cup of HOT water. Very slowly, using a whisk, mix in a little at a time. Be careful! It will make a crazy noise, and if your pot is shallow enough, can potentially splash you. After it’s all incorporated, set aside to cool in a glass bowl.
**Side note, this caramel mixture will harden shortly after you are finished with the cookies. If you wanted to make a liquid caramel sauce to have on hand for ice cream, breads, desserts, etc, you would add 2/3 of a cup of hot water at the end, instead of 1/3. It will stay liquid instead of hardening.**
Dice 1 granny smith apple. If you have a food chopper, it’s faster than dicing. Your choice if you’d like to remove the skin. I left mine on and thought it was delicious! Use 1 cup of the apples. Add 2 teaspoons of flour, 2 teaspoons of cinnamon and a pinch of salt. Mix and set aside.
To make our cookie mixture, cream together 1 cup or butter and 2/3 of a cup of sugar. Then mix in 1 egg, 1 teaspoon of vanilla and 1/2 teaspoon of salt. Slowly, add in 2 1/2 cups of flour. Perfect! Easy. Done.
Now add the apples to your sugar cookie mixture. Gently. Don’t want to work the dough too hard.
Put some flour on your hands and roll out a cookie the size of your palm and flatten down a little bit. You can mold all of your cookies first, then do the caramel. Using a teaspoon measure, very lightly, make a little circle around the center of the cookie. You’re just trying to slightly indent so that the caramel will sink in. Do NOT press too hard. If you do, the cookie will fall apart after baking. (Another of my failed first attempts.) Really, a very light indent!! Now drizzle caramel in the indent, and spread all around the cookie. Bake in a 350º oven for 12-15 minutes. Once they come out and your kitchen smells like heaven, place on a cooling rack.
*Optional but highly recommended for extreme satisfaction, place your cooling rack on top of your baking sheet so you don’t make a mess. Drizzle the remaining caramel over the cookies.
These are SERIOUSLY delicious. If you had your eyes closed, you would have no idea it was a cookie. You would just think it was the best apple pie you had ever tasted!
Give this one a shot, guys, I promise you won’t be disappointed!!
Have a great week!!
Stephanie
Classy Cookin' With Chef Stef 