Apple Crisp Cookies are a delicious treat that are perfect for a holiday cookie tray or a cute gift for neighbors and friends. Try them soon!
This adorable Cookie Recipe combines the best parts of Apple Pie and my Ultimate Apple Crisp into a portable, mini Apple Crisp Pie. These cookies will be right at home on a holiday cookie platter along with my Award Winning Gingerbread Cookies and Cinnamon Roll Sugar Cookies.
Sabrina’s Apple Crisp Cookies Recipe
Apple Crisp Cookies combine the two most comforting fall apple desserts in one delicious handheld treat. The best part is? Only a small amount of apples, because everyone knows the best part of a crisp and a pie are the delicious, buttery, crispy shells!
Recipe Card
Ingredients
- 1 Pie Crust , (you can make half that recipe)
- 5 Granny Smith apples , peeled and diced
- 1/4 cup sugar
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- 2 tablespoons lemon juice
- 1 tablespoon cornstarch
- 1 cup flour
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 1/2 cup light brown sugar , packed
- 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
- 2/3 cup rolled oats , (not instant)
- 10 tablespoons cold unsalted butter , diced
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
- Add baking spray or grease regular muffin tin (you’ll use it twice or spray two muffin tins).
- Cut 24 two inch circles out of your pie crust.
- If you need to, gather your scraps and re-roll them to ¼ inch thickness.
- Add the pie crust to the muffin tins.
- In a small saucepan add the apples, sugar, cinnamon, lemon juice and cornstarch.
- Cook for 5-7 minutesuntil the apples are softened and thickened.
- To make the crisp topping, add the flour, ½ cup sugar, ½ cup brown sugar, salt, oats and butter to a bowl and combine with either a hand mixer or pastry cutter.
- Add one tablespoon of apple filling to each muffin well.
- Add two tablespoons of the crumble topping on top.
- I give the tops a quick spray with canola oil, but it is totally up to you. I find it helps hold the topping together.
- Bake for 18-20 minutes.
- Let cool completely before carefully removing.
Video
Nutrition
Want to save this recipe? Create a free account to easily save your favorite recipes
Sabrina Tips
This recipe is especially fun to make in the fall if you’ve been apple picking with the kids. Kids can help with cutting out the pie crusts with a cookie cutter, stirring up the apple mixture, and sprinkling the oat topping on the cookies before baking.
Table of contents
About this Recipe
You may have seen some adorable Pinterest photos of Apple Pie Cookies, with the cute crust and everything. They look beautiful, and also like a lot of work. The best part about this recipe is that the topping is as easy as it is cute. You don’t have to worry about the cookies looking delicious; the crumble will take care of that for you, and the bottoms brown nicely because of the pie crust. The inside is still delicious, chewy, moist and still has a hint of liquid filling.
Ingredients
- Pie Crust: Make an easy Homemade Pie Crust or just use a store bought frozen crust and thaw according to the package instructions. The crust on the bottom layer of these cookies makes them look and taste like mini apple pies with a crispy oat topping.
- Apple Filling: While the recipe calls for the classic Granny Smith apples, you can use your favorite baking apples. Look for medium apples that don’t have any bruises or wrinkling on the skin. When you simmer the peeled and diced apples with sugar, cinnamon, lemon juice, and cornstarch, the juices from the apples will combine with the other ingredients to make a delicious sticky apple pie filling for your mini crisp cookies.
- Crisp Topping: The crunchy streusel topping is made with flour, white sugar, brown sugar, salt, oats and butter. Make sure to use old-fashioned rolled oats and not instant oats whenever you are baking.
How to Store
- Serve: The cookies can be enjoyed after cooling and removing from the muffin tin.
- Store: In an airtight container, the cookies will keep at room temperature up to 3 days and in the refrigerator up to 1 week.
- Freeze: Freeze cookies in a sealed plastic freezer bag, separated by parchment paper so they don’t stick, for up to 3 months. Defrost at room temperature.
Frequent Questions
Granny Smith apples are typically used for baking recipes, because their tartness is a good balance for the cinnamon and sugar you’ll add. You can also use other apple varieties like Braeburn, Honeycrisp, or Pink Lady, or a combination for a variety of flavors and textures.
Absolutely! Use a store-bought pie crust to make this cookie recipe even easier. Most frozen pie crust comes in a double package, and you only need one crust for this recipe, so keep the other frozen to use another time.
In addition to cinnamon, try adding a touch of other warm spices like ginger, cloves, nutmeg, cardamom, and star anise. Or try using this easy Pumpkin Pie Spice or your favorite store bought blend. Try adding extra cinnamon to the oat topping for more spiced flavor, or grate whole nutmeg on top for a beautiful and fragrant finish.
Always use old-fashioned oats when baking. These are also called rolled oats because they are processed by being rolled flat so that they cook in about 10 minutes. Instant oats are rolled and also steamed so they can be cooked in about 1 minute, but this makes them not ideal for baking as they will become mushy instead of crispy on your topping. You need the firmness of the rolled oats to stand up to the baking, the others will disappear into the topping when baked and become mushy.
When giving cookies as a gift, you want to bake them as fresh as possible before wrapping and gifting. Make sure they are cooled completely, and package them in tissue paper to keep them from cracking. For cookies that can be sticky like these ones, you may want to separate layers of the cookies with parchment paper. If your gift box or tin is not air tight, wrap the entire box in a clear plastic bag and tie with a decorative ribbon. Then your gift wrap also serves to help keep the cookies fresh!
Variations
- Crumble Topping: If you’re not a fan of old-fashioned oats, you can leave them out and use this same apple cookie recipe to make apple crumble cookies.
- Caramel: Turn these into Caramel Apple Cookies by drizzling them with Salted Caramel Sauce. You can also add chopped caramel candies or caramel baking chips to the homemade apple filling.
- Chocolate: Stir mini chocolate chips into the apple mixture or drizzle with Chocolate Ganache after they’ve cooled.
- Peanut Butter: Stir some peanut butter baking chips into the apple filling, or soften peanut butter by warming it in the microwave in 10-second increments and drizzle on top.
- Fruit: Substitute some of the apple for other fresh fruits like diced pear, peaches, or berries for a delicious fruity cookie crisp. You can also mix in dried fruit like cranberries, dates, or raisins.
- Nuts: Add chopped pecans, almonds, walnuts, or peanuts to the crisp topping for an extra nutty crunch.
Related Recipes
More Holiday Cookie Recipes
Photos used in a previous version of this post.
Hi Sabrina, I’ve just joined and am enjoying your reading about you & your recipes & the members nice comments. I look forward to trying your dessert recipes. Just for your interest, I’m from the South West region of Western Australian Cheers.
Oh my God I just made these and they are delicious. Great recipe. I will definitely make it again.
Absolutely delicious? Next time I will use my smaller pan that has 24 little cups that will make them more like a cookie to me. Otherwise, the cupcake size would be great for party.
Good to know and thank you Judy for the 5 star rating!
Would you recommend baking your piecrust first?
Hi Barbara,
I didn’t bake the little pie crusts first and they turned out great! Let us know what you decided to do!
Looks a lovely recipe, I’m unsure about butter measured out in tablespoons. How much does that weigh? I am from UK
Do you squash the butter into a tablespoon and flatten the top, or take a guess at the amount, chop it up then put it in the tablespoon, then squash the leftover butter back into the butter pack??
Hi Gerri,
At the top of the recipe card there is a button that says Metric that will automatically show all ingredients in metric measurements.
Hope that helps.
One of the best best desserts I’ve ever made. And I make a lot.
Can you freeze these?
Freeze: Freeze cookies in a sealed plastic freezer bag, separated by parchment paper so they don’t stick, for up to 3 months. Defrost at room temperature.
I am a beginner at baking. To make the circle pie crust cut outs. Where did you find the cookie cutter? Sorry if this a stupid question but I haven’t been able to find one. Thank you.
Hi Heidi,
Here’s an Amazon link for round cookie cutters!
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=round+cookie+cutter&crid=2JPV53ZT9IQ3Q&sprefix=round+cookie+cutter%2Caps%2C159&ref=nb_sb_noss_1
Hope you find it helpful and enjoy the recipe!
Made this and it’s delicious!! Easy step by step and very rewarding!
Thank you!
Hi Sabrina, I like your suggestion of using a shortbread cookie crust so I can make it GF. How thin do you roll the shortbread dough? Is the dough crumbly ? Want to make these for thanksgiving . Thank you
1/4 inch thick. How did your cookies turn out?
could this be made into a slab cookie in a half size sheet pan?
Autumn, what a great idea. Try it and let me know how it turns out!
Could these cookies be made with sugar cookie or shortbread bases, instead of pie crust?
I’ve made them previously with the shortbread cookie recipe on the site and they were delicious. I haven’t tested with sugar cookie dough.
It was so delicious that 24 cookies were not enough. Very tender, flavourful and easy make. I will definitely make this again