Time for the gooiest, chewiest, happiest cookies around. Loaded with melty caramel, bits of dried apple, and tons of oats, these are SO festive and fun. My gluten free caramel apple oatmeal cookies will blow your mind. (But not your diet…well, not too much anyway.)
Plus, guys, I’ve made them gluten free! I really have been meaning to make more gluten free recipes around here, and have been experimenting with some gluten free flours. But, frankly, I hate them all. I think I’ll just start trying flourless recipes at this point, because that seems likely to be more successful and certainly healthier.
Which brings me to these bad boys. They taste incredibly rich and decadent, but they’re actually not (at least as far as cookies go.) The caramel bits are the real indulgence, and they’re sweet enough to cut way down on the sugar in a normal batch of cookies, and the oats and eggs replace all the flour.
These are inspired by an old favorite Cooking Light recipe that I used to LOVE and made quite a bit during law school. I tried to make vegan caramels to reinvent this recipe when I was vegan, but I could never get caramels firm enough to chop up and bake in cookies, so it’s been at least four years since I’ve had these cookies. I DEVOURED them.
Enough blabbering, time for a cookie recipe!!!
- 1/2 C butter, softened
- 1 C unpacked brown sugar
- 3 eggs
- 2 t vanilla extract
- 3 C certified gf oats
- 2 T cornstarch
- 2 t baking powder
- 1/2 t salt
- 2 t cinnamon (apple pie spice would be good too)
- 1 C caramel bits or chopped caramel candies (you want pretty firm ones for this, like those classic clear wrapped ones)
- 8 dried apple rings, chopped into small pieces
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
- Cream butter and brown sugar together. Then beat in eggs and vanilla.
- In a separate bowl, mix the dry ingredients (except apples and caramels). Gently stir into the wet mixture. Fold in caramels and apples.
- Using a large ice cream scoop (for gigantic cookies), form batter into balls and place about an inch and a half on a cooking sprayed baking sheet. Bake for about 10 minutes, just until the cookies are starting to brown on the bottom. About halfway through the cooking, I gently flattened each cookie just a little bit with the back of a spatula. I found this really helped them keep their shape better.
- Remove from the oven and allow to cool COMPLETELY before you remove them from the baking sheet. Trust me on this one, or they will fall apart.
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