Apple Cinnamon Oatmeal Cookies made with a cake mix and fresh apples. Delicious oatmeal cookie recipe that tastes a little bit like apple pie!
We love cookies made with a cake mix because they are just so easy to make! They are so versatile because you can change out the flavor of cake mix and come up with all kinds of different cookies. The cake mix replaces most of the dry ingredients in the cookies which makes them come together even more quickly than other cookie recipes.
APPLE CINNAMON OATMEAL COOKIES
Apple Cinnamon Oatmeal Cookies are the perfect fall cookie. The cookie recipe is made with a cake mix, oats, brown sugar, cinnamon, applesauce, and diced apples. The result is a soft, chewy cookie that is absolutely delicious! And your house will smell sooooo good while these cookies are baking too!
Why You’ll Love This Recipe
- It’s easy to make! Gotta love “recipe hacks” and tricks for reducing effort and time in the kitchen. Thanks to the boxed cake mix, we don’t have to measure out very much to get wonderful cookies.
- The recipe is quick to follow. No dough chilling is needed, so all you have to do is mix, scoop, and bake. Perfect for a nice treat when you’re in a hurry or don’t feel like waiting hours.
- The apple taste is wonderful! We have applesauce AND fresh chopped apples in here to give us a wonderful fresh apple taste. Plenty of fiber that pairs so well with warm spices. These cookies were truly made for Fall.
Ingredients in Apple Cinnamon Oatmeal Cookies
Yellow cake mix – A box of yellow cake mix (about 16-18 oz) is the base ingredient of the cookies. You can use a white cake mix or a spice cake mix if you don’t have a yellow one on hand.
Oats – Quick oats work best in these cookies, but if you like a chewier cookie, you can use old-fashioned oats instead.
Brown sugar – A little bit of brown sugar adds the perfect amount of sweetness and flavor to the cookies. The brown sugar pairs so well with the apples. For best results, make sure the brown sugar is fresh and soft.
Cinnamon – Two teaspoons of ground cinnamon really add a lot of flavor and cinnamon is just one of those things that you have to have when you are using apples in a recipe.
Egg – One large egg will help to bind everything together.
Applesauce – You will need 3/4 cup of applesauce to provide most of the moisture in the cookies. I usually use unsweetened applesauce since there is enough sweetness in the other ingredients, but you can use sweetened applesauce if you prefer. Either will work great!
Apple – You will need one large apple so that you can add about 1 cup of diced apples to the cookies. Make sure to peel the apple first.
How to make Apple Cinnamon Oatmeal Cookies
Prep
Preheat oven to 350°F.
Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or grease with nonstick cooking spray.
Make dough
In a large bowl, combine the cake mix, oats, brown sugar, and cinnamon.
In another bowl, combine the egg, applesauce, and chopped apple.
Combine the two mixtures and mix well.
Bake
Drop by heaping teaspoonfuls onto a baking sheet and bake for 10-12 minutes or until slightly golden brown.
Let cool on the cookie sheets for a few minutes before transferring to wire racks to cool completely.
Apple Cinnamon Oatmeal Cookies
Ingredients
- 1 package yellow cake mix 15.25 ounces
- 1½ cups quick oats
- ½ cup packed brown sugar
- 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
- 1 large egg
- ¾ cup applesauce
- 1 cup finely chopped peeled apple
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350°.
- In a large bowl, combine the cake mix, oats, brown sugar and cinnamon. In another bowl, combine the egg, applesauce and chopped apple.
- Combine the two mixtures and mix well.
- Drop by heaping teaspoonfuls onto a baking sheet and bake for 10-12 minutes or until slightly golden brown.
- Let cool on the cookie sheets for a few minutes before transferring to wire racks to cool completely.
Nutrition
ARE APPLE CINNAMON OATMEAL COOKIES HEALTHY?
These cookies are sweet enough to be delicious but are a little healthier than most cookies. Each cookie only has about 125 calories, which is pretty low for a cookie! All the liquid comes from the egg and the applesauce, so you don’t need to add butter or oil. And the greatest part is that you can’t even tell! The cookies also have fresh apples and oats…so I feel totally justified in counting these cookies as a balanced breakfast option.
WHAT KIND OF APPLES WORK BEST IN COOKIES?
You can use any apples, but apples that are firm and tart like Granny Smith, Honeycrisp, or Pink Lady, will work the best. They will add a nice tang flavor to offset the sweetness of everything else and taste incredible!
HOW LONG ARE COOKIES GOOD FOR?
You can keep these cooled cookies in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 3 or 4 days. A trick my mother-in-law taught me is to put a piece of bread in the cookie container. The cookies absorb the moisture from the bread and stay soft for a couple of days longer.
CAN I FREEZE COOKIES MADE WITH A CAKE MIX?
Yes, these cookies freeze wonderfully. Simply place the cookies into an airtight container and freeze them for up to three months. Let the cookies thaw on the counter before eating so that they are softer enough to bite into. This only takes a few minutes for a single cookie or two.
HOW TO MAKE PERFECT CAKE MIX COOKIES
Making Cake Mix cookies is easy! Here are a few tips to getting perfect cookies every time!
- Preheat the oven. This will help your cookies turn out right every time!
- Use a cookie scoop! If you want all your cookies to be perfectly shaped and have them all be the same size, a cookie scoop is the way to go.
- Use parchment paper or a silicone baking mat. Doing this will make it really easy to remove the cookies from your cookie sheet so that you don’t have to scrape them off the pan – they will just slide right off in perfect shape! Do not grease the parchment!
- Don’t overbake the cookies – when I take mine out of the oven, they still look slightly under baked, but they will continue to bake on the cookie sheet for a couple more minutes, so that’s ok!
- Be careful not to over mix. Just mix enough to combine the ingredients.
LOVE APPLES? HERE ARE OUR FAVORITE APPLE RECIPES:
- Air Fryer Apple Fritters
- Apple Zucchini Bread
- Dutch Apple Bread
- Cake Mix Apple Pie Bars
- Apple Cinnamon Scones
- Sour Cream Apple Pie Bars
- Caramel Apple Snickerdoodles
- Apple Bundt Cake
- Apple Hand Pies
- Brown Sugar Fried Apples
- Caramel Apple Nachos
- Apple Snickerdoodle Cookies
- Apple Pie Cookies
Apple Cinnamon Oatmeal Cookies made with a cake mix and fresh apples. Delicious oatmeal cookie recipe that tastes a little bit like apple pie!
momma-lana says
I am thinking these could be a great bar cookie too if spread in a pan and baked.
momma-lana says
I did make them as a bar because I was too lazy to make into cookies. I spread them in a 10×15 jelly roll pan and baked them at 350 for 20 minutes. They looked ugly so I drizzled some powdered sugar glaze over them to pretty them up. Yum. They are so good with coffee!