Applesauce Drop Cookies with Easy Caramel-Coffee Frosting

Christmas Applesauce Drop Cookies dressed up with a vanilla almond bark swirl and gold food spray.

My annual Christmas baking began on December 21 this year.

I just had a little trouble getting into the baking mood after making and decorating a half sheet cake for our CMA Christmas party. How about you? There always seems to be so much to do between Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve. 

Additionally, I made 4 dozen cutout snowmen cookies for the Christmas cookie exchange at work. I love baking, but sometimes I just need to make the baking easy on myself by making drop cookies to accompany the decorated, holiday sugar cookies. 

Yield: about 3-4 dozen cookies 

• Heaping teaspoonful of dough makes 3 dozen
• Slightly rounded teaspoonful of dough makes 4 dozen

Time: 1 hour chill time       8-10 minutes bake time

Cookie Ingredients

• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/2 cup shortening
• 1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce
• 1 egg
• 1 3/4 cups all purpose flour
• 1/2 tsp. baking soda
• 1/2 tsp. salt

Caramel-Coffee Frosting  See the recipe and ingredients below

Directions

• Put brown sugar, shortening, applesauce, and egg into a medium sized bowl and mix well with a whisk, or a hand mixer.
• Add flour, baking soda, and salt. Stir by hand until blended well.

Cover and refrigerate the dough for at least 1 hour. I make the cookie dough the evening before I want to bake.

• Heat oven to 400 degrees F. 
• Measure dough out with a teaspoon and scoop out a rounded teaspoonful. Use a second spoon to aid in dropping the dough onto your cookie sheet.
• Drop rounded teaspoonfuls of dough about 2 inches onto an ungreased, or parchment lined cookie sheet.
• Bake for about 8-10 minutes, or until almost no indentation remains when you touch the cookie top. Also, cookies will harden somewhat as they cool.
• Immediately remove from the cookie sheet and cool. 

Cookie Baking Tip

Lining a cookie sheet with parchment paper makes transferring hot cookies VERY easy. 

You just slide the entire sheet of cookies out of the pan and onto the cooling rack. 

No trying to slide a spatula under hot cookies! Yeah!

Caramel-Coffee Frosting

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup salted butter 
• 2 cups powdered sugar
• 1 tsp. caramel flavoring
• 2 Tablespoons cold coffee

Directions

• Heat butter in a 1.5 quart sauce pan over low heat. 
• Remove pan from the heat when the butter is melted.
• Stir in powdered sugar and caramel flavoring
• Stir in coffee until frosting is smooth and spreadable
• Cover tightly until ready to use the frosting

This frosting dries quite quickly, so keep a damp paper towel over the frosting and cover tightly if you need to stop frosting your cooled cookies. 

Perfect Drop Cookies Every Time Tips

1. Keep the cookie dough refrigerated in between batches
2. Put cold cookie dough onto a cool cookie sheet each time. Baking times are figured from the time you put a batch of cold dough onto a cool cookie sheet.