I am still on an apple kick, everyone.  I had more apples left over from our apple picking excursion, even after making the apple crisp.  I decided it was time to make applesauce!  Then, after I made the applesauce, I wondered what to do with it all.  So, I decided to make gluten-free caramel applesauce cookies.  It was an apple-win all around.

First, for the applesauce, I kept it super simple and used my slow cooker.  I grabbed the last 10 apples I had left (none were super big, most were small-medium), and peeled and cubed them.  I put all the apple pieces into my slow cooker, along with a cup of water, a squeeze of lemon, a teaspoon of gingerbread spice, an extra half teaspoon of cinnamon, just a few teaspoons of brown sugar, and a splash of apple cider I happened to have in the fridge.  The apple cider wasn’t necessary, but I figured if I had it, it couldn’t hurt anything.  I set my slow cooker on high for 4 hours and stirred occasionally.  At the end, I used my spoon to mash up some of the bits, but it basically turned out like chunky spicy applesauce.  You could also use a handheld mixer or immersion blender to make it totally smooth.  See the handy printable below for the recipe.

Now that I had all this delicious applesauce, I wanted to bake something with it.  I am always trying to think of ways to limit the sugar/butter/gluten-free flour aspect of recipes and make things healthier.  Not just calorie/fat-wise, but also in a way that my body feels good after I eat something.  I wanted to make cookies, and decided that using my applesauce and a combination of gluten-free flour and gluten-free oat flour was just what I was looking for – and that is how I came up with my caramel applesauce cookies.

I started by creaming together brown sugar, an egg, vegetable oil, and applesauce.  I used THE applesauce from my slow cooker so it already had a lot of yummy spices in it.  You can just tell by the color of the batter that the flavors are going to be great.

In my second bowl, I mixed together gluten-free flour, oat flour, baking soda, and spices.  I didn’t have to go as heavy on the spices as I would normally because of my flavored applesauce.  If you use regular, natural applesauce, I would suggest increasing the spices for sure (I made suggestions in the printable recipe, below).  Now, you’ll see I used oat flour – this was simply using my mini food processor to grind gluten-free old-fashioned rolled oats.  If you use oat flour to substitute some of your regular gluten-free flour, use about 25% less oat flour than the recipe calls for (so if it calls for 2 cups of gluten-free flour, you could use 1 cup of gluten-free flour and ¾ of a cup of oat flour).

You may also note that there is no salt included in this recipe.  This is because the caramel chips I used were sea-salt caramel chips.  I tasted one before starting the recipe, and I could tell I did not need to use any additional salt.  If you use regular caramel baking chips, add a ½ teaspoon of salt.

I added the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and gave everything a stir.  Saving the best for last, I gently stirred in my sea salt caramel chips (mine were Hershey’s brand).

I dropped about a tablespoon of dough per cookie onto a cookie sheet with parchment paper (to prevent sticking), and placed it in a 325 degree oven for exactly 12 minutes.

The cookies came out DELICIOUS – a cakey, oat and spice cookie with delicious caramel flavor.  These will not be crispy cookies; they stay nice and soft.  The caramel chips really add a ton of flavor, and the oat flour a lot of texture.

One thing I want to further add – if you are allergic to peanuts, you need to check the ingredients label on all of the caramel chip bags.  On the particular kind I used (Hershey’s sea salt caramel chips), there is a warning on the label that the caramel chips are made on the same equipment that processes peanuts.  Therefore, as my daughter is allergic to peanuts, before I mixed the caramel chips into the batter, I poured a small amount of batter into a second bowl.  In the second bowl, I used white chocolate chips that I know are safe for V, instead of the caramel chips.  Since her allergy to peanuts is severe, I avoid products with warning labels like this one.  Just a heads up, because I reviewed quite a few different caramel chip products and could not find one that I considered safe for peanut allergies.