Apple Snickerdoodle Cookies (aka Appledoodles) are a fun twist on the classic Snickerdoodles! Chewy and flavorful, this is a great way to use up apples in the fall!
Original post: November 2014 | Updated: October 2020
Why This Recipe Works
Apple Snickerdoodle Cookies are the perfect way to use up apples. An apple a day, keeps the doctor away, right?! It’s a line that runs through my head when I’m excited about fall and apples.
And at what point do I rename this website to reflect my obsession with all things apple? Actually, this might be my last apple-related post for a while.
There are too many other recipes that need to be made, eaten and shared. Plus, can you believe Thanksgiving is coming up so quickly?
What recipes would you like to see on here before then? Mashed potatoes? Pecan Pie Bars? Creamy Crockpot Corn? Check out my list of suggestions below!
Recipe Ingredients
Apples – Use medium baking apples such as honeycrisp, gala, golden delicious, jonagold or granny smith. Be sure to pat the grated apples dry before adding them to the batter in order to avoid a wet, gooey cookie.
Cream of tartar – Don’t skip using cream of tartar in these cookies. It will help leaven your cookies and give it a good chewy texture. Cream of tartar can last in your cupboard a long time as long as its covered tight and away from the light.
How To Make Snickerdoodle Cookies with Apples
Step 1
Line baking sheets with parchment paper to prepare for the cookies. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
Step 2
In a medium bowl, mix the dry ingredients: flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, salt and cinnamon. Mix well and set aside.
In a large bowl, combine the wet ingredients: butter, sugar, eggs and vanilla. Mix until fully combined and gradually add the flour mixture. Mix until combined.
Add grated apple (use 2 medium to large apples) and mix well.
Step 3
In a small bowl, combine sugar and cinnamon. Mix well.
Step 4
Using your hands, roll the dough into 1-inch balls and roll in the cinnamon sugar mixture until fully coated. Place on parchment-lined baking sheets.
Bake for 10 to 12 minutes. Let cook on a wire rack.
Enjoy the aroma of apple pie in the air! I hope this becomes a favorite dessert recipe!
Recipe Notes
- The cookies will be puffy when they come out of the oven. Give them a few minutes to cool and flatten (if you can stand the wait).
- Replace up to 1/2 cup of the sugar with brown sugar, if desired!
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Keep Apples From Browning
When chopping and peeling the apples, fill a large bowl about half with cool water and squeeze the juice of 1/2 lemon into it. The lemon juice will keep your apples from getting brown while you get them prepped for the recipe.
Use an apple corer/peeler if you have one because they will make this process go super fast. If you don’t have one, use a potato peeler and a knife to get the job done.
You’ll need to peel, core and chop the apples. Place them into the water-lemon juice mixture as you work.
Best Apples For Baking
I recommend using a variety of apples and at the very least, use two kinds: one sweet and one tart. My favorite combo is Granny Smith and Honeycrisp apples.
Sweet/Softer Apple Brands
- Fuji
- Honeycrisp
- Red Delicious
- Golden Delicious
- Cortland
- Gala
Tart (or a little Sour) Apple Brands
- Granny Smith
- McIntosh
- Ida Red
- Braeburn
- Empire
- Jonathan
FAQ About Snickerdoodles
A snickerdoodle is a basic sugar cookie that is rolled in cinnamon and sugar before being baked. It’s also unique that it uses cream of tartar to help leaven the cookie.
Cream of tartar has two purposes in your snickerdoodle recipe. It should help activate your baking soda and it can also add tanginess and chew to a cookie.
If your cookies are coming out of the oven looking flat, you either haven’t used the appropriate leavening agents (baking powder or baking soda) or you have used too little flour. If the cookies are flat and greasy, you may have used too much butter. Follow baking recipes very closely to avoid making flat cookies!
For optimal cookie softness, allow them to cool completely after coming out of the oven and store as stated in the directions. Some cookies store best in the fridge while others store well while covered at room temperature.
Other Amazing Apple Recipes
- Easy Homemade Crockpot Applesauce is a kid-worthy snack that is fun to prepare because it’s so easy to make. Use an assortment of green and red apples.
- Homemade Apple Cider made in your slow cooker will warm you from the inside out with amazing flavors. It is a must-have fall drink and tastes so much better when you make it yourself.
- This is the best Apple Coffee Cake recipe you’ll find. Enjoy as an indulgent breakfast treat or an any-time snack or dessert!
- These baked apple slices with cinnamon are the perfect sweet, gluten-free any-time dessert. Enjoy apple pie minus the crust!
- Transform classic French Toast into an appley indulgence! Prepare this easy Apple French Toast Bake recipe the night before so there’s no morning prep! It’s also wonderful as a make and bake option.
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Apple Snickerdoodle Cookies Recipe (Appledoodles)
Ingredients
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line three baking sheets with parchment paper and set aside.
- In a medium bowl, combine the flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, 2 teaspoons cinnamon and salt. Mix well and set aside. In a large bowl, combine the butter, 1 1/2 cups sugar, eggs and vanilla. Mix until creamy. Gradually add the flour mixture until combined. Fold in the shredded apples.
- In a small bowl, combine the 1/4 cup sugar and 2 teaspoons cinnamon. Mix well. Roll the dough into 1-inch balls using the palms of your hands. Roll in the cinnamon-sugar mixture until coated and place onto the prepared baking sheets.
- Bake in the preheated oven for 11 to 12 minutes. Cookies will look puffy when done. Allow them to cool for 5 minutes and serve or store, covered.
Notes
- The cookies will be puffy when they come out of the oven. Give them a few minutes to cool and flatten (if you can stand the wait).
- Be sure to pat the grated apples dry before adding them to the batter in order to avoid a wet, gooey cookie.
- Replace up to 1/2 cup of the sugar with brown sugar, if desired!
It would be helpful to have a measurement on the amount of apples. They vary so much in size. That might be the reason for so many different outcomes. I would recommend adding the apples directly to the mixture as they are shredded. I think some of the flavor was lost by soaking in the lemon water.
I have fresh apples and was planning on making this recipe but have run out of time in my schedule! Could I shred and freeze the apples and use them in this recipe when I have a little more time?
Hey Vanessa! I’ve not tried this myself but I don’t see why this wouldn’t work. Let me know if you try it, how it goes!
This is my new favorite cookie recipe. I didn’t have cream of tartar so I used a bit of lemon juice instead which worked great and instead of grating the apples I diced 2 Granny Smith apples and roasted them for a little bit to dry them out slightly because I was worried they’d be too wet of an inclusion. It worked great and I will be making these cookies a whole lot more.
Love it when we can do a little improvising and have a recipe turn out great. Thanks for sharing Morgan!
The taste was really good but my cookies were as flat as pancakes! I don’t know why. Seems like every other comment says their cookies were puffy! I want puffy cookies!
Hi Wendy – I understand when you hope for cookies one way and they come out another. These cookies are meant to be more flat and chewy so by omitting the cream of tartar, you could see that happen. There are several ingredients that can impact why cookies might be flat vs. puffy – it can have to do with how old your baking soda is, how much butter/flour you use and just the temps and humidity even! I know that the more air you beat into the butter can help the cookies be puffier and using melted butter vs soft can help them be more dense. Sorry I don’t have a perfect answer. I feel like every time I make cookies, they come out a little bit different. I hope you try them again!
I figured out how to get the cookies flat, after you roll them in the cinnamon /sugar, pat it down, like you would with a peanut butter cookie…
Thank you so much for an amazing new cookie recipe
I’m glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for sharing.
How can I get my cookies to be flatter like in the picture? Mine were very puffy even after cooling!
Hi Melanie, I’m sorry they didn’t turn out like you were hoping. I hope they still tasted amazing! There are a variety of reasons to cause cookies to puff up. One can be that you are overestimating your flour use. It’s important to scoop up your flour and then level it off with a knife. Baking soda is one ingredient that also you have to measure well because it’s instrumental in rising the cookie. You could also try chilling the dough before baking. Mine have been a little puffy before but tend to settle and be more flat. I hope this helps!
These tasted great but very cakey, which my husband didn’t like (reminds me of the Lofthouse cookies . Not sure what causes a cookie to be more cakey? (I’m very much a baking newb.) I also couldn’t really taste the apple. Would adding more apple help that? Or dicing instead of grating like some in the comments have suggested? They’re delicious as snickerdoodles, but I really hoped for more apple taste. (I used Granny Smith.) My dough was also super sticky, but I had to stop in the middle for dinner and had much better luck with the second batch after it had been refrigerated for an hour.
I feel like this could be really great if I can just figure out how to tweak it. ?
Depending on how moist the apples were when you added them to the batter, that may have affected the cakiness of the cookies. For a more concentrated apple flavor, buy freeze-dried apples and pound them into a powder (place in ziploc bag and use wooden spoon) and add it to the batter. You wouldn’t need more than 3 Tbsp to get a super concentrated apple flavor. If the batter is ever sticky, refrigerating should definitely help and you can try adding more flour, as well. Adding the apple powder would help get rid of the stickiness, too!
Awesome info! Thanks!
FYI, I took them to a bake-off at work yesterday and won for Best Tasting Overall! People said they were amazing! So thanks. ?
That is so fun! I’m so glad they turned out and they were enjoyed. Good job!
I made these cookies last night and they were delicious! My dough was also very sticky, more like a muffin dough. I did have to improvise the recipe. I didn’t have enough butter, so I used half the butter and the rest applesauce. I diced my apples very small and patted them dry. I also halved the cinnamon and added nutmeg and all spice in it’s place. Still a very yummy cookie! Thanks for the inspiration!
Way to not get discouraged and make yourself a delicious treat! Thanks for sharing how you made them – I’m sure others will appreciate the alternative ideas!
Made these twice. Had to squeeze out the juice from the shredded apples so it wasn’t too wet. The taste of these are great. However you barely taste to apples and they are more fluffy than anything else. Maybe don’t add the baking soda. I might try chopping the apples into very small pieces so it’s more of a chunk than shredding it. If you like chewy cookies more than cake like then these aren’t for you.
So sorry you had these issues, Shanon! Mine turn out appley and perfect every time as written, but there can definitely be some variations with extra juicy apples. Patting the apple dry before adding it to the better is helpful!
Megan
My daughter and I made these for Thanksgiving and they were delicious! We added 1/2 cup of caramel chips to the recipe which gave them even more flavor! So easy! Will definitely make again.
Caramel chips, what a great idea! Trying this next time! So glad you loved the cookies. 🙂
Megan
Made these today and they were amazing! Will definitely make again!
So glad, Mandi! This is one of my favorite apple recipes of all time!
Megan
My cookies were also very puffy. The apples I used (gala) grated well and did not go mushy but I still found the dough to be very moist and difficult to roll into balls. Taste okay but not as good as the regular snicker doodle cookies that I have made previously. Probably wouldn’t make these again.
The same happened to me, was very sticky and hard to rough. I had to place dough in freezer for a bit
Sorry to hear the dough was sticky! I hope the freezer helped. If the apples are too "juicy," I’ve found that patting them dry with paper towels helps, as well. Thanks for the comment!
Megan
I made these the other day and they were really yummy! Mine were thicker/puffier than yours and didn't crack on top at all though. I'm wondering if I should have drained some of the liquid off the apples? Because when I was rolling them they were very moist (I couldn't roll them in my hands properly without the cinnamon sugar). Thanks for the recipe.
Hi N Swartz! Use the largest grater you have and it should be just fine. Maybe chill your apples before grating them, too. I hope this helps!
Megan
Hello. What tool did you use to get the apples cut like that? I used a grater and it turned out to be mush. Still tastes delicious but very cakey. Please help!
Snickerdoodles are probably my favorite cookie, I love this apple twist!
Great recipe Megan! Love the apple addition! What restaurant have you had the best snickedoodle cookies? Remember to add it to your Besty List! http://www.thebesty.com/pipandebby
How about some recipes for using up Thanksgiving leftovers; particuliarly leftover stuffing? and some new ideas for leftover turkey, too?
So delicious! These cookies look awesome!