Thick and Chewy Gluten Free Apple Peanut Butter Cookies

Delightfully thick and chewy gluten free apple peanut butter cookies with tiny, fork-tender chunks of diced apple throughout and rich peanut butter flavor.

I used to think of “cookie season” as the fall and winter holiday time. I now consider it to be all year, and just doubling down around the holidays.

It is in that spirit that I give you these delightfully thick and chewy gluten free apple peanut butter cookies. They really are the perfect fall cookie.

Baking with peanut butter and apples

Something pretty amazing happens when you bake with both peanut butter and apples. Baking with peanut butter tends to make cookies crispy, like standard crosshatch peanut butter cookies.

And since apples have lots and lots of moisture in them, baking with them tends to produce a cake-like cookie. Baking with both, in the very same cookie? Boy oh boy.

What to expect from the raw cookie dough

You can see in the photo above how moist the raw cookie dough is. You can easily squeeze it together in your hands.

Unlike the dough for many other cookies, you won’t chill this dough before baking it. The peanut butter in the dough helps to keep the cookies from spread too much.

You do want to roll the dough into a ball, and then press it into a disk. Otherwise, your cookies will be more like puffy little buttons than actual cookies.

What is the texture of these apple peanut butter cookies?

Thick and chewy is indeed the very best way to describe these cookies. They spread just enough to make a proper cookie but not so much that there are any lacy, crisp edges.

The tiny, tender apple chunks add the unmistakeable flavors of fall, and the peanut butter flavor is rich and full, just as it should be. Say hello to a new family favorite.

Ingredients and substitutions

Dairy

If you’re dairy-free, you will need to replace of the butter in this recipe. I would try vegan butter. Melt brand and Miyoko’s Kitchen brands are my favorite.

Earth Balance buttery sticks generally are not a good substitute for butter in any recipe like cookies that need to maintain their shape during baking. They have a lot more water in them than butter, and that causes the cookies to spread a lot more than intended.

Egg

Since there is only one egg in this cookie dough, you should be able to replace it relatively easily. I would try a “chia egg” (1 tablespoon ground white chia seeds + 1 tablespoon lukewarm water, mixed and allowed to gel).

Peanuts

These are peanut butter cookies, so you need, well, peanut butter. The recipe calls for a smooth, no-stir peanut butter, which is just the type of nut butter the oil in which doesn’t naturally separate from the rest of the mixture at room temperature.

If you would like to try using another nut butter, I recommend trying smooth, no-stir almond butter. Barney Butter is a really good brand (although it’s crazy expensive, and seems only to have gotten worse!).