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An easy recipe for Applesauce Chocolate Chip Cookies that are so good you’ll wonder why you haven’t made them this way before.
These Applesauce Chocolate Chip Cookies are soft, cakey and have just the right amount of spice to them. They are divine little morsels and definitely are a keeper in my book. So disclaimer time – I love nuts in food when I can see them in plain sight, like in pasta or salads, but I have to draw the line on baked goods. For me, there’s something about biting into what looks like a gorgeous chocolate chip cookie and WHAM there’s a nut. My gag reflex goes into overdrive!
So when a recipe for cookies or brownies calls for nuts, I usually swap with raisins or chocolate chips. It’s the safer route for me personally and anyone in the vicinity of me. So if you love nuts in your cookies than by all means load em up! I hope you enjoy these cookies as much as I do! And my kids. And my neighbor Anjel. They really are delicious.
Ingredients in Applesauce Cookies
- Butter – it’s always best to use room temperature unsalted butter in baking, unless otherwise noted, and add Kosher salt to your dry ingredients.
- Sugar – white granulated sugar, but you could use light brown sugar for a chewier texture.
- Applesauce – unflavored applesauce is used and spices are added to taste.
- Flour – all purpose unbleached flour that is spooned into the measuring cup and leveled.
- Baking Soda – use the freshest baking soda possible. Here’s a tutorial on how to test if your baking soda is still active: Martha Stewart – How to Test Baking Soda
- Spices – ground cinnamon and nutmeg give these cookies the perfect spice.
- Chocolate Chips – semi-sweet chocolate chips or chunks.
How to make Applesauce Chocolate Chip Cookies
OK peeps – think ahead. Don’t be me and try to “room temperature” your butter in the nuker. It just doesn’t ever turn out the right way. Hence the gooey butter oozing from the center of the not-so-room-temperature-cube.
Add 1 cup of sugar to the ROOM TEMPERATURE cube of butter and cream it. Cream it good. Until light and fluffy!
Add 1 cup of unsweetened applesauce to your sugar butter. You could use homemade here and have AMAZING results. I, unfortunately, didn’t have the opportunity to put up applesauce last fall so this is unsweetened applesauce from the store.
For the dry ingredients, you need 2 cups of all-purpose flour, 1 tsp baking soda, 1/2 tsp salt, 1 tsp cinnamon and 1/2 tsp nutmeg. Put it all in a bowl and whisk it together to incorporate. You could also use a sifter, but I like less cleanup and the whisk works just as well.
Add the flour to the butter mixture and mix just until combined. Now decision time. Nuts, Raisins, Chocolate chips? A mixture of all? The choice is yours! May the Schwartz be with you!
Bake them at 375 for 12-14 minutes or until lightly browned on the bottoms and the tops are cooked through. Mine are a tad flat for 2 reasons. 1) I didn’t use room temp butter and 2) I’m still figuring out the correct temps for my convection oven. So expect yours to be taller and more cake-like, assuming you do as I say and not as I do.
Now go forth and make some deliciousness for someone you love. (that includes YOU).
Happy Baking!
Applesauce Chocolate Chip Cookies
Ingredients
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 375º F and line baking sheets with parchment or silpats, set aside.
- Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the applesauce and mix to incorporate.
- In a medium bowl whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg. Add to the butter mixture and mix until just incorporated. Stir in the chocolate chips.
- Drop by spoonfuls or use a hinged ice cream scoop and space about 2 inches apart. Bake for 12-14 minutes or until lightly browned and the centers are cooked through.
Nutrition
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Recipe By:
Heather is a recipe developer and content creator living in Vancouver, Washington. She started Farmgirl Gourmet in 2006, almost 20 years ago, as a way to share recipes with friends and family. Heather is also the co-founder of Spiceology , a unique spice company, which she started in 2013. She shares family friendly recipes for easy everyday meals with a gourmet twist.
These turned out really yummy. I use a whole pkg. of chocolate chips. Parchment paper on a cookie sheet works great. 12 min was perfect. My husband absolutely loves these.
So glad you and your husband loved them. I tend to just toss in the whole bag of chips too…YOLO, right? 🙂 Thanks for commenting!! ~heather
Can I make these with oil instead of butter? I don’t have any right now lol
Tried these today and I added craisins, walnuts and dark chocolate chips. Awesome!
Love these cookies! Printing out and saving in my cookbook. I used M&Ms instead of chocolate chips, my daughter and her friend ate them up!
This is an awesome recipe! I added a teaspoon freshly squeezed orange juice to the apple sauce and then substituted chopped Lindt’s chili dark chocolate for the chocolate chips! Amazing!
So glad you enjoyed these cookies. They are a go-to in our house. We <3 them! Thanks for popping back to comment.
Instead of apple sauce, I used fresh apricot sauce that I made. I like eating whole apricots but found I don’t like sauce. Instead of throwing it out I found your recipe and thought there can’t be much difference in using a different type of fruit sauce and it worked! They taste great! I also used brown sugar instead of white sugar. Baked for only 10min at 350.
I decided to make these… I did everything right, or so I thought. After making one pan full, I realized something wasn’t right. After looking over the ingredients again, I realized that I had left out the backing soda! 🙁 So, I mixed in some and put the next batch in. They, finally, poofed up and got rounded! At least I know what happens if you don’t have baking soda now…
I have done that in the past as well!! It’s easy to do for sure!! Glad you caught it and were able to salvage them. Chalk it up as today’s science experiment. 🙂 ~Heather
This recipe does sound good from what I’ve read. I can’t wait try to try this. Do you have a calorie count per cookie? Also, is there a recipe for a double-chocolate chip cookie in your recipe collection? I’m new at this whole cookie baking thing.
This recipe was very good. I added 1 tsp vanilla and substituted 1/2 cup brown and 1/2 cup white sugars in lieu of solely white sugar. Thank you for sharing.
I like your version. And I didn’t notice that the recipe didn’t call for Vanilla. I think Vanilla should always be an ingredient for cookies and cakes. Thanks.
As a person allergic to eggs, this recipe was a great find. I was hoping my cookies would look more like the ones pictured and maybe have a bit of crispness to them, but I guess I made them “right” as they are
Cake-like, but yummy. Thanks for sharing!
@Kate679 – You could replace the butter with applesauce, but be prepared for them to be a little tough. Not as cakey. I’ve done it before with Oatmeal cookies using only applesauce and they were good. Give it a shot and let me know how it goes.
Made these today and YUM! I replaced the sugar with 2/3C agave, dropped oven temp to 350 and baked for 12 min – so good!
While I love to bake, I’m not good at subbing items, but am wondering if you could use more applesauce in place of the butter?
I concur with the No Egg?!? I am waiting for mine to bake now and we’ll see.
Can’t wait to try this out! Looks delicious!
No egg?
These are the most tasty cookies! I used a chunky apple sauce and they are so moist and yummy! Next time, we’ll be doubling the recipe!
Love this lower fat recipe. Perfect for us watching our intake!
@tastesbetterwithfriends Thanks Ethan for allowing me to share this great recipe! Your Grandma was on to something with these cookies. Delish!
They look great heather! I too thought about using chocolate chips, but I decided i’d start with the recipe as is, but good to see they are just as good!
Thanks for doing my grandma’s recipe proud:)
Love these cookies! I just made them too and couldn’t stop eating them, so additive. I used nuts but anything with chocolate makes me happy!! 🙂