The Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap - Apple Snickerdoodles

It's that time of year again!  Time fooooooooooooooor...........


Yes!  Woohoo!  (Pardon me while I do my happy dance with my cookies.)  I send out three sets of delicious cookies and I receive three different sets of cookies!  I knew very early on this year that THESE cookies were the ones I was going to send off.  They were so different and yet so... homey.  Everyone loves snickerdoodles.  Most people love apples.  How no one managed to combine these together until now is beyond me.  I even neglected posting this recipe countless times because if I did, that meant I couldn't send off these cookies.  And we couldn't have that, now could we?  I really hope that everyone I sent these cookies to enjoyed them as much as I did!  (And my husband, who requested me to make a second batch for himself because the batch I made to send off made exactly 36 cookies.)

Note:  This recipe requires you to use boiled cider (available here).  It is absolutely one of my favorite ingredients ever!  It allows you to give a hint of apple flavor to your baked goods without actually having apples in them.

Apple Snickerdoodles
adapted slightly from King Arthur Flour’s Baking Sheet

Cookies:
¾ c. Vegetable Shortening
¼ c. (½ stick) Unsalted Butter, softened
1 ½ c. Sugar
1 Egg (large)
¼ c. Boiled Cider
2 tsp. Baking Powder
½ tsp. Salt
2 ¾ c. All Purpose Flour

Spiced Sugar Coating:
2 tsp. Baking Spice
½ c. Sugar

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
In a small bowl, mix both ingredients of your sugar coating and set aside.
Using a stand mixer, beat the shortening, butter, and sugar together until smooth.
Add in your egg, beating until smooth.
Mix in the boiled cider, baking powder, and salt.
Finally, add in your flour, mixing until combined.  (This batter is THICK!)
Using a tablespoon of dough, round the dough with your hands and then coat in your spiced sugar mixture.
Place them on a non-stick cookie sheet (or one that’s covered in parchment), leaving around 1 ½” between them.
Dip the bottom of a glass in the spiced sugar mixture and press each cookie down gently until they are around ½” thick.
Bake for 9 to 11 minutes or until lightly golden.
Allow them to cool on a rack.
Eat and Enjoy!!

Apple Cinnamon Muffins/Bread

Apple and cinnamon?  Yum.  "Yes, please" and, "Please, sir, may I have another?"

I'm sure you recall the Blueberry Muffin Bread recipe where I had too much batter and ended up having to use the remaining batter to make bread.  Well, I did the same thing here only I really don't know how it happened.  Unlike with the Blueberry Bread, I followed the directions, using white whole wheat flour and all-purpose instead of substituting white whole wheat for regular all-purpose.  This recipe is SUPPOSED to yield 12 happy muffins.... yeah, not for me.  I don't understand why or how it happened but I'm just glad it did!  To think that I now have the knowledge to turn muffins into bread.... OH THE POWER!!!!!  Oh, did I say that out loud?  Do forgive me.  I'm not that power-hungry... usually.

When baking with apples, you have to be careful about which type of apple you choose.  A Red Delicious, for instance, is great for eating but terrible for baking.  They disintegrate.   So much you won't even be able to tell there's apple in it.  My favorites?  Granny Smith and Braeburn, all of which are readily available in your local grocery store.  When I bake pies, I enjoy using a mixture of both those apples.  The Granny Smith is very tart and the Braeburn helps to cut through that tartness.  Honeycrisps are my favorite for eating around the holidays (because that's usually the only time you can find them) and are the apples most commonly used in apple cider.  See, you can learn new things on baking blogs!  For a quick overview of apples for baking, here's a quick link from allrecipes.com for you.  Due to the sweetness from the sugars and cinnamon chips, I chose to use a Granny Smith apple here to help even out the flavors but you can choose whatever variety you like.

Apple Cinnamon Muffins/Bread 
courtesy of the KAF Cinnamon Flav-R-Bits package

1 c. White Whole Wheat Flour
1 c. All-Purpose Flour (or 2 c. All-Purpose)
1 tsp. Baking Powder
1 tsp. Baking Soda
1/2 c. Butter, at room temperature (salted - if using unsalted, add 1/4 tsp. salt)
1/2 c. Sugar
1/2 c. Brown Sugar
1 Egg
1 c. Buttermilk
1 large apple, peeled, cored, and chopped (I used Granny Smith)
1/2 c. Cinnamon Chips

Preheat the oven to 450°F.
Line a muffin tin with paper cups.
Combine the flours, baking powder, baking soda, and salt, if using.
In a separate bowl, beat the butter with the sugars until fluffy.
Add your egg and mix well.
Mix in the buttermilk to the egg and sugar-butter mixture.
Fold in your dry ingredients, apple, and cinnamon chips.
Divide the batter evenly among the prepared muffin cups.  Should you find yourself with extra batter (which somehow, I did), spray 2 3x5 pans with cooking spray and divide the batter into the pans.
Bake for 10 minutes, reduce the heat to 400°F, and bake for an additional 8 to 10 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center of a muffin comes out clean.
If you're baking breads, tent some foil over the pans and bake for an additional 10 minutes (30 minutes total).
Don't fret if your muffins come out dark - they're supposed to thanks to the brown sugar.
Cool the muffins for 5 minutes in the tin, then turn them out onto a rack to cool completely.

Apple Pie Crumble

I've said it before and I'll say it again - I love giving food as gifts.  I made this for my dad for this birthday, which was at the beginning of September (my apologies for the huge delay in posting!).  He loves apple pie but I wanted to do something a little different.  So I decided to make an apple pie crumble!  Genius, right?  Quick and simple.  Just the way I like it (I save the hard stuff for days when I feel like making yeast breads).  I love my recipe for apple pie filling.  The apples with the spice and sugar mixture is so good that I find myself eating the apples before I put them in the filling!  Of course, anyone who does something like that will only admit to "taste testing" because who in the world would want to send something out before tasting it?  Certainly not me!  With apple season upon us, this is a wonderful way to put some delicious apple-y goodness on your table with not much effort!


Apple Pie Crumble
filling courtesy of Ultimate Southern Living Cookbook
crumble courtesy of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
the idea of combining them?  All me.

Filling:
6 c. Apples (I use a combination of Braeburn and Granny Smith)
1 Tbsp. Lemon Juice
1/2 c. Sugar
1/2 c. Brown Sugar
2 Tbsp. All Purpose Flour
3/4 tsp. Pumpkin Pie Spice

Crumble:
1/2 c. Flour (KAF)
1/2 c. Rolled/Old Fashioned Oats
1/2 c. Brown Sugar
3/4 tsp. Cinnamon
1/3 c. Butter (leave it set out for around 15 minutes to make it easier to handle)

Apple Blondies

I loves apples.  It took me a very long time to actually be able to eat apples in anything though.  When I was little, I didn't eat apple pie or apple dumplings or apple anything.  Except apples.  I love raw apples!  As I've grown older, I've grown to love apple things.  I make a wonderful apple pie that I hope to make again and post the recipe for.  My father asked me to make him a deep dish Dutch apple pie once.  That recipe took me 3 different recipes from 3 different cookbooks just to be able to finish.  That was a hassle but it turned out good.  I may make that again one day now that I know what in the world I am doing!  This was much, much simpler.  And it uses my favorite cinnamon chips!  I'm telling you, when Christmas rolls around and Harris Teeter gets in their annual stock of cinnamon chips, I'm buying a case!  Haha!  The recipe actually calls this "Apple Brownies" but there is no cocoa in this recipe so technically it should be called a "blondie" which is what I'm calling them.  I hope you enjoy this recipe as much as I did!  (Goes GREAT with vanilla ice cream!)


Apple Blondies
recipe courtesy of King Arthur Flour Baking Sheet, Autumn 2011

1 1/4 c. All Purpose Flour (KAF)
1/2 tsp. Baking Powder
1/2 tsp. Baking Soda
1/2 tsp. Ground Cinnamon
1/2 c. Butter (I use salted - if you use unsalted, add an additional 1/2 tsp. salt)
1 c. Sugar
1 Egg
2 1/2 c. Apples, Peeled and Diced (I used Braeburn apples for this recipe) - amounts to around 2 or 3 apples
1/2 c. Cinnamon Chips
1/2 c. Walnuts, Chopped

Preheat oven to 350.
Spray an 8x8 pan with butter flavored cooking spray.
In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder and soda, and cinnamon.
Melt the butter in a saucepan or microwave.
Remove from heat and whisk in the sugar.
Cool the butter and sugar mixture to lukewarm and add the egg (use caution because you don't want scrambled eggs - make sure your butter/sugar mix is cool!).
Combine the butter/sugar mixture with the flour mixture.
Fold in the apples, cinnamon chips, and walnuts.  (NOTE:  This mixture will be THICK - it's gonna take some elbow grease to make sure everything is properly mixed together!)
Pour the batter into your 8x8 pan.
Bake for 40-45 minutes.

(see those lovely cinnamon chips?  Yummy!)


Calories:  206 (per 2" square)