Recipe: Caramel Apple Cookies

Some of these cookies looked perfect. But scroll down for the real deal...

I'm almost done with all the apples in my house. The peanut butter apple cookies were a huge hit, so I thought I'd try a different cookie recipe. I found this one on the Two Sisters blog. Final word: while they taste good, there are a few things I would change next time.

Ingredients

• 1 cup Butter (Sweet Cream Salted, softened)
• 1 cup Granulated Sugar
• 1/2 cup Brown Sugar
• 2 Large Eggs
• 1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
• 3 cups All-Purpose Flour
• 2 1/4 teaspoons Cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon Baking Powder
• 1 teaspoon Baking Soda
• 1/2 teaspoon Salt
• 1 heaping cup finely diced and peeled tart apples
• 1 batch of our The Best Caramel Buttercream Frosting
• 8-10 Kraft Caramel candies

Directions

1. Peal and dice 1 heaping cup of tart apples.
2. In a large bowl, cream butter and sugars until light and fluffy.
3. Beat in eggs and vanilla.
4. Mix in cinnamon, baking powder, baking sold and salt and mix well.
5. Add 1 1/2 cups of flour and mix until combined.
6. Add in 1 cup of apples and mix with a spoon.
7. Add the remaining 1 1/2 cups of Flour and combine until the flour is completely incorporated into the cookie dough.
8. Bake the cookies in a 375° oven for 13-15 minutes or until golden brown around the edges.
9. Allow cookies to cool.
10. Make a batch of our The Best Caramel Buttercream Frosting.
11. Frost Apple Cookies with the Caramel Frosting.
12. Melt 8-10 Kraft Caramel Frosting in a pan on low heat.
13. Drizzle the melted caramel over the frosting.

You always know a recipe is not up-to-snuff when it doesn't tell you to preheat the oven. And this one doesn't even distinguish between Fahrenheit or Celsius, but at least it's obvious. It also doesn't tell you how long to cool the cookies or where (on the baking sheet? on a rack?). To me, these are clear signs of a recipe that is not thorough enough to be a guaranteed winner.

But the batter looked so smooth and soft, and it tasted so good! It came out like little ice cream scoops! I was really hoping I could make it work. But there's always a catch...

The recipe also doesn't tell you how big to make the cookies, and that was my downfall. I made the cookies WAY too big, so they spread out like little pancakes. They became too thin with barely any bottom to speak of; they crumble at the drop of a hat! Here's what most of them looked like:

You can see all the crumbs underneath! They look like blobs that I had to cut apart because they melted into each other.

And because of this, I did not even attempt to ice them. They can't bear their own weight, let alone that of icing AND caramel drizzle. If I made these again, I would use less butter (it's just too much!) and I would make them smaller. I would also be sure there was plenty of room in between each one. I'll update this post if I try them a second time!