Bakery-Style Apple Butter Cookies

Happy Sunday and Day 4 of the 12 Days of Christmas, where for the next eight days/posts I moonlight as a holiday baking elf and share a series of holiday-themed recipes that I hope you will try out for yourself this holiday season.

You can consider today’s recipe what I like to call a ‘sequel’ to Day 3, where I made this Chunky Gingerbread Spiced Apple Butter.

While it’s perfectly delicious on its own as a condiment for things like toast, biscuits, scones or as a dip for cookies and crackers, there are a lot of other uses for apple butter than just as a condiment.

It’s texture and flavor make it a pretty great baking ingredient.

I’ve done some experimentation and found some really great uses for apple butter over the past few years.

You can fold it into scone dough.

You can mix it into many different types of quick breads.

You can even use it as pretty good filling for sandwich cookies.

And as it turns out, apple butter can be used to make some pretty amazing cookies all by themselves.

My first preference for the best kind of cookie are when they’re Bakery-Style: meaning, when they’re big, thick, cakey and pillowy soft in the middle, with juuuust the right amount of chew to them. In all the years I’ve been baking I’ve found that there’s a real science/technique to getting cookies to turn out this way; you can’t use/depend upon shortcuts.

Baking powder is a must. I’m always very suspicious of cookie recipes that claim to be ‘thick’ and ‘cakey’ but do not have any baking powder in them–so suspicious in fact, that if it isn’t there, I add it in myself, usually in the same proportion as the baking soda, which is what gives the cookies that chewiness that we all love.

(Don’t make a habit of trying something like that unless you’re a rather experienced baker who knows a few things about cookie science;-))

Chilling the dough is also essential. I’m also very suspicious of a bakery style cookie, or a stamped/embossed cookie that does not have any chilling time and just instructs you to bake the dough directly after baking.

When left unchilled, that dough is almost guaranteed to spread too much resulting in a cookie ‘pancakes’ rather than ones with nice domed tops and some height to them.

If you’ve got the time, I highly recommend/urge you to always always always chill your cookie dough.

Your cookies will thank you for it.

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way I can move onto where I was able to include a pretty hefty amount of apple butter in the cookie dough. This is not just for flavor, although that’s a huge part of it. Apple Butter functions a lot like applesauce or oil or sour cream here in that it also gives the finished cookies moisture that will make them last for a pretty long time with proper storage.

I was a little bit concerned when putting together the dough for these; it was very wet and moist, more than I prefer for cookie dough to be. For that reason, I actually gave this dough two chillings: the first one is just after I put the dough together. I decided that it was still too soft and moist to be rolled into balls and would just make a mess. Once and only after the mass of dough was sufficiently chilled/firm did I divide them up into 1/4 cup balls. And after that, I let them chill overnight in the fridge, just to be sure.

All in all, these require a little bit more TLC than the average cookie recipe, but I will say: that added effort it SO worth it.

I mean, come on: don’t they just look fantastic?

They baked up large, domed, pillowy and cakey in the middle–just the way I like them. The cinnamon sugar also gave them a crackly crust on the outside that was the perfect complement to their softness in the middle.

These are one of my new favorite cookies I’ve made for the holidays, and that’s really saying something. Even if you prefer to just purchase some apple butter, I highly recommend you give them a shot before the Big Day 😉

Day 1: Holiday Lunch Lady Bars

Day 2: Ginger Thins

Day 3: Chunky Gingerbread Spiced Apple Butter

Day 4: Bakery-Style Apple Butter Cookies

Bakery-Style Apple Butter Cookies

Recipe Adapted from Imperial Sugar

Ingredients

1/2 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup apple butter (I used this one, but store bought will work just fine too.)
2 cup white granulated Sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon cream of tartar
1/2 cup Cinnamon Sugar

Directions

Cream butter, apple butter, and sugar on low speed until mostly incorporated. Increase speed to medium-high and beat for 1-2 minutes. Scrape down sides of bowl at least once during creaming.

Mix in eggs and vanilla. Mix just until well combined.

In a medium bowl, combine cinnamon, flour, baking soda, baking powder, and cream of tartar.

Slowly add dry ingredients to butter mixture. Mix until dough forms.

Place into a refrigerator and chill for 2 hours.

Use a 1/4 cup measure to scoop out dough balls that you roll between your hands. (This will probably be a little bit messy; the dough is somewhat soft/moist. Lightly dust your hands with flour in between rolling the dough balls and it should be okay though.)

Place the dough balls in a resealable plastic container that you’ve lined with wax paper or foil and refrigerate overnight.

Preheat oven to 375°F.

Place th 1/2 cup of cinnamon sugar in a small, shallow container. Roll the chilled dough balls in it until they have an even coating all around.

Place cookies onto an ungreased baking sheet.

Bake 13-15 minutes, or until cookies have puffed in the middle and the surface looks set (not wet).

Allow cookies to sit on the cookie sheet for about 2-3 minutes, before moving baked cookies to wire rack to cool completely.

Note: no one oven is the same, & different baking sheets bake cookies differently. Keeping this in mind, I will ALWAYS test bake one cookie before baking entire sheets of the whole batch, just to get a good idea of how long they should be in the oven and if I need to adjust the way I’ve cut, rolled them out, etc. I highly recommend that you do the same.