Mid-week vibes coming at you because I CANNOT wait for the weekend. Tony and I are headed to Pensacola, FL and we couldn’t be more excited to hit the beach. Somehow Chicago went from 70 degrees last week to a measly 45 with a wickedly cold Lake Michigan wind chill. NOPE, I’m just not ready for it.
Plus, I still haven’t unpacked my mittens from our move so there’s that.
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There are a lot of things I’m looking forward to in the next month: THANKSGIVING, pumpkin pie, my birthday (DEC 22), lots of travel, buying all the things at Trader Joe’s and of course, COOKIE BAKING.
In my mind, cookie season starts as soon as it gets chilly. It’s the absolute perfect excuse to test out as many recipes as possible, pawn off treats to your co-workers and drink as many hot chocolates (because hot chocolates & cookies are the best combo EVER.)
I’m not sure if you guys knew this, but oatmeal cookies happen to be my favorite; a little extra nutrition, a good chew and a hearty texture make them impossible to resist. To put a twist on a traditional oatmeal cookie, I added apples — well, SweeTango® apples to be exact. They’re sweet, crunchy and hands down my favorite apple (even over the Honeycrisp). Actually, SweeTango apples were made by breeding the Honeycrisp and Zester! apples together — pretty cool, huh?
These cookies aren’t just basic babes either. They’re uniquely flavored and nutritious thanks to the apples, coconut oil, whole wheat pastry flour and coconut sugar. Sometimes a lighter cookie is exactly what you need this time of year. Plus they’re topped with a PEANUT BUTTER GLAZE! Sorry for the all caps, but you know how I love my peanut butter.
The SweeTango apples give the cookies the absolute perfect amount of sweetness so you don’t need a ton of excess sugar for sweetness. They also help to keep the cookies moist and chewy, which is why I only needed to use just a tiny bit of coconut oil.
Ingredients in the apple oatmeal cookies:
Coconut sugar or brown sugar: I opted to use coconut sugar in this recipe because it has notes of caramel flavor (the perfect apple pairing) and added just the right amount of sweetness to the cookies. If you aren’t familiar with coconut sugar, you can basically replace it 1:1 with granulated sugar in most recipes. It’s all natural and retains some nutritious benefits, unlike regular sugar. I highly recommend trying it out.
Whole wheat pastry flour: I’ve gotten a few questions about that lately from some of you wondering what it is. Here’s the rundown: It’s basically just a lighter version of whole wheat flour — meaning it still has all the benefits of whole wheat flour, but with a lighter texture and flavor. It is truly WONDERFUL in baked goods. Trust the AK.
As always, recipe changes and alterations can be found in the notes section of the recipe. I hope you guys LOVE these. They’re healthy enough to eat for breakfast, right?
If you make them, leave a comment below or snap a photo, upload it to Instagram and tag #ambitiouskitchen so I can see your creations! xo.
More apple desserts you might like:
Chai-Spiced Healthy Apple Oatmeal Muffins
Vanilla Coconut Milk Caramel Apple Crisp for Two
Ambitious Kitchen
Cookbook
125 Ridiculously Good For You, Sometimes Indulgent, and Absolutely Never Boring Recipes for Every Meal of the Day
Whole Wheat Apple Oatmeal Cookies with Peanut Butter Glaze + Giveaway
Ingredients
- 1/3 cup coconut oil or butter, melted and cooled
- 3/4 cup brown sugar or coconut sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 large egg
- 1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
- 1 cup old fashioned oats
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
- 1 large SweeTango apple, peeled, cored and shredded
- FOR THE GLAZE:
- 2 tablespoons peanut butter
- 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1/4 cup organic powdered sugar
- 1-2 tablespoons almond milk
- Optional: 1/4 cup chopped pecans
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside.
- In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, oats, baking soda, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg.
- In a separate large bowl, beat together coconut oil, coconut sugar, vanilla extract and egg until smooth and creamy. Fold in shredded apple with wooden spoon.
- Slowly add in dry ingredients and mix until just combined and a dough forms. Fold in pecans, if using. Place dough in fridge for 10-15 minutes.
- Use a medium cookie scoop to place cookie dough on a baking sheet, about 2 inches apart. Bake for 9-12 minutes or until cookies are golden brown around the edges. Allow cookies to cool on baking sheet for a few minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool. Repeat with remaining dough.
- While the cookies cool, make the glaze by mixing peanut butter, vanilla, powdered sugar and almond milk together in a medium bowl. The glaze should be drippy enough to glaze over cookies. Add more almond milk if necessary.
Recipe Notes
Nutrition
This post is in partnership with SweeTango. All opinions, recipes and text are my own. Thanks for continuing to support AK and the brands that help make this site possible.
If you make anything from AK, be sure to tag #ambitiouskitchen on Instagram — I love seeing your creations and featuring followers! You can also find me on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Snapchat (username: ambitiouskitch).
You had me at peanut butter glaze 🙂 I’ve been dying to try putting apples in cookies for a while and now I have the perfect excuse!! These look absolutely incredible!!
No bake gets my attention but that glaze drizzled across the top coupled with the apples – wow.
Well that was stupid, I was looking for peanut butter cookies and two recipes hit my hot button. I confused them both. Obviously the other one was no bake. My apologies. Where’s the erase button when you need it. 🙂
No worries Maureen! 🙂 I’m glad that you’re into the peanut butter glaze though – apples and peanut butter are the best combo!
Oatmeal, apples and pb is seriously my favorite combo eva and I eat that in the morning everyday! Cookie form is even more spectacular and I need to try those apples!!!! Entered in the giveaway!
These look incredible! Can’t go wrong with a peanut butter glaze.
Oh these look absolutely amazing and delicious! These are on my list for a Christmas cookie exchange!
These look fantastic… that drizzle though!
Thanks!!! Enjoy.
Honeycrisp has always been my favorite, but I’ll have to give SweeTango a try!
Ditto Katie on Honeyscrisp but I hear great things about SweeTangos (and their origin story was in a really fascinating podcast I recently listened to)! These cookies look fantastic, especially with that PB glaze 😉
If you love Honeycrisp, you will adore SweeTango. Best apples ever. I find them a little more crunchy and less mealy.
not sure if you’re familiar with the spilled milk podcast (it’s a comedy/food podcast with molly wizenberg from orangette and matthew amster-burton), but they do this thing where matthew comes up with fake produce names (for varieties of apples, tomatoes, etc) and molly tries to guess which ones are real and which are fake. i definitely would have thought sweetangos was a fake name, but now i have to try it because they made me laugh!
So jealous you are heading to Florida!! Bring some of that warm air and sunshine back with you to GR next week! PS: These look so good – i love SweeTango apples!!
Can’t wait to see you!
These look and sound wonderful. I’ll freely admit, for the longest time I was *that* person who groaned every time I saw the phrase “whole wheat” in a dessert – until I discovered whole wheat pastry flour. That stuff is genius! I make chocolate chip cookies with it last week and everyone raved. I love apples and peanut butter together, I’m betting it’s so terrific in cookies! I’m pinning these to try sometime!
I lovveeee whole wheat pastry flour. Always in my kitchen 🙂
Apples and peanut butter is my favorite snack so I’m all over these yummy cookies! They look so good!
These cookies look awesome! I LOVE SweeTango apples. They have that perfect crispy bite. Plus these cookies are such a great use for them. Can you ship a few my way?
Bring on the cookie baking!!! it’s getting chilly here too. My husband would love these!
We are looking forward to meeting you tomorrow!
These cookies look delicious! I love eating an apple with peanut butter for a snack but have not thought about it as a cookie. I can’t wait to try these!
Apples and peanut butter is seriously the best! I put peanut butter on my apple oatmeal…so why not in a cookie?! I think I might even have these for breakfast 😉 Pinned!
I love the idea of apples peanut butter oatmeal. Oddly, I eat a lot of apples peanut butter and apples oatmeal, but I’ve never put all three together. This looks delicious!
Peanut butter and apples are quite possibly my favorite snack and I just picked up some Sweet Tango apples at Whole Foods last week. So good, so I’m betting these cookies are fantastic!
I showed my husband this recipe and the first thing he said was “Woah”, lol! Seriously, these are mouthwatering, I am now committed to making a batch this weekend! 🙂 Thank you!
Does the calories include the glaze? I see the note it doesn’t include pecans but just wanted to check. Thanks.
Yes it does!
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Wow, these look amazing I will definitely be making them this week after I hand in this mega-essay! Sidenote, we have the same birthday! <3
The perfect post-essay treat! And no way – twins!
I didn’t even need the drizzle I loved the cookie so much! I didn’t have allspice so I just used apple pie seasoning instead – yum!!!!
Perfect! I need to get some apple pie seasoning 😉 Glad you loved them!
I just made these cookies and they are DELICIOUS but they spread and were very very soft for me (I could barely pick them up from the cookie sheet). Any idea of what I might have done wrong?
I’m so sorry you had an issue. I just updated the recipe and added another 1/4 cup flour after retesting! It should be updated now.
If I am looking to make these for a friend who on a paleo diet, what would the best flour be to swap in place of the ww pastry flour? Many thanks!
Since these are oatmeal cookies, and oatmeal isn’t paleo, I don’t think these would be a good option for your friend, sorry! Try these paleo chocolate chip cookies instead: https://www.ambitiouskitchen.com/the-best-paleo-chocolate-chunk-cookies/
OMG these were SO Dang good!! I actually froze them for a few weeks before baking and they legit melted in my mouth right out of the oven. I’m salivating for more!!! I didn’t even do the glaze – I can’t imagine how good it is with it! I used all monkfruit zero calorie sugar and regular AP flour. A++++++++++++++++++++++ I make so many cookies these are one of my fav yet
Glad to hear that those swaps worked out! Such a great cookies for fall (and good idea to freeze for later!)
Amazing recipe, loved the product and the glaze was just the icing on the cake:) Thank you for the recipe.
Also pls check out my food blog on Instagram-@the_cinnamon_street_co
These are very yummy fall treat! I ended up with too many apples from the orchard and decided to make these with them – I will be making again!
Perfect! Glad you found these!
These look amazing!! What if I dice the apples really small instead of shredding? Anybody try that? I also like to replace sugar with real maple syrup. Do you think that would work in this recipe? Replacing 3/4 cup of brown sugar with maple syrup doesn’t sound like a great idea.. but I could probably get away with it with the glaze, right?
Thanks!
These are truly fall in a cookie. Omg, so good. I LOVE apples and these cookies are incredible. I accidentally didn’t have whole wheat (oops!) but regular honestly worked fine. And I bumped the nutmeg up a bit. Perfectly spiced and absolutely delicious! A little bite of fall even in May.
Oh I am so happy to hear that, Erika! Glad that AP flour worked well and that you’re loving them!
Made these for an event and didn’t use the peanut butter drizzle because of potential allergies. I ate two before the event and would have given them 4/5, but the fact that we had NONE left over after the event + lots and lots of compliments must mean they deserve 5/5 haha. Thanks!
Oh, and I used applesauce for most of the oil.
Haha I’m so glad everyone loved them!! And happy the applesauce worked well 🙂
Also, it made 25 cookies for me.
Should these be stored in the fridge or counter? And actually, for the future, how do I know that for each recipe? What ingredients is it that makes it need or not need the fridge? Thanks!
Hi, Melinda! Usually we note storage instructions in our recipes — sorry we didn’t list them here; we’ll add them! Feel free to keep these cookies in an airtight container at room temperature for 1 day, then transfer to the fridge.