Chewy Caramel Apple Cookies

Ingredients:

Caramel apple cookies - two great tastes that go great together, right?

Wrong, apparently. There was not a single recipe for true cookies out there - oh sure, there were a few apple bars that you poured caramel on top of, but I felt that they were not expressive of the true intent and spirit of the cookie.

So I said the heck with it, and made up my own recipe.

Without further ado, I present... Chewy Caramel Apple Cookies.

1 C. butter, softened
1 C. packed light brown sugar
1/2 C. sugar
2 eggs
3 T. apple cider
1 1/2 C. flour
1 1/2 C. quick-cooking oats
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
1 C. packed dried apple rings
30 caramel candies

Step 1:

First things first - you need to unwrap the caramels, because no one likes eating plastic.

Step 2:

Next, you need to quarter all of the caramels, like so:

Step 3:

Once you're done with those, take your dried apple rings. It's important not to get the ones with cinnamon on them. To measure, take a 1 cup dry measure, and cram as many apple rings as you can fit in there. Then, chop them up into leetle chunks, like so:

Step 4:

You should end up with two piles of dried apples and caramels, looking like this:

Step 5:

Now that the prep work is done, it's time to get cooking. Preheat your oven to 350 F, and get out a mixing bowl. In it, you should toss your butter, and both sugars.

Step 6:

Cream these until smooth.

Step 7:

Next, add your eggs one at a time, and beat until smooth.

After your eggs, add the cider. And yes, you read correctly, that is three tablespoons of cider.

Step 8:

Next, mix your dry ingredients together - the flour, oats, salt, and baking soda.

Step 9:

Gradually add them to your (fairly wet) dough, mixing well.

Step 10:

Mix:

Step 11:

Finally, add your caramel bits and apple chunks, and blend until uniformly distributed through the dough.

Step 12:

Mixed:

Step 13:

Drop the dough by the rounded tablespoon onto a non-stick cookie sheet. If you don't have a non-stick cookie sheet, line one of your others with foil and grease it. Leave at least an inch between doughballs.

Bake at 350 F for fifteen minutes, or until the edges just start to brown.

Step 14:

As they cook they do spread out - and the caramel does melt, which is why the non-stick properties of the cookie sheet are important.

Cool the cookies on the sheet for five minutes. After this, transfer them to a wire rack to finish cooling.

And finally, enjoy! The chewy caramel apple cookies go great with a glass of cider or milk. This recipe makes approximately 2.5 dozen cookies. They lasted approximately 4.5 minutes in my house.