Our Favorite Fall Cookie Recipes

Chopped apple, pecans, apple juice, apple pie spice and more combine for a hearty, delicious cookie. The frosting and nuts add just the right touch of sweetness and crunch on top.

Caramel Apple Cookies

Nothing fancy here; this is the perfectly chewy lunchbox classic, pebbled with walnuts and plump raisins. A combination of vegetable oil and butter ensures a chewy texture and rich flavor. This recipe comes from Patty Pinner's cookbook Sweets (crownpublishing.com).

Miss Rosa Lee’s Oatmeal Cookies

Coarsely chopped cranberries spread the sweet-tart flavor throughout this tender scone, a winner at the Warrens Cranberry Festival recipe competition. A sweet almond frosting complements the berries.

Anita's Cranberry Scones

Coconut adds chewiness to this full-of-chips cookie. The recipe is from Rene's Bakery in Indianapolis, one of the most popular Indy bakeries.

Rene's Bakery Chocolate Chip Cookies

The recipe for these sweet and spicy cookies comes from the Warren family in Stanley, Kansas. The gingersnaps are a favorite at family gatherings.

Gingersnap Gems

Whether your brew is coffee or tea or just a glass of milk, take a break with one of our tempting baked goods flavored with chocolate, cranberry or coffee.

Chocolate-Cranberry Biscotti

Latte Checkerboards

Looking for a healthier cookie? Shredded apple, whole wheat flour, canola oil and wheat germ reduce saturated fat and add whole grains and flavor to peanut butter cookies.

Peanut Butter Apple Cookies

These gooey bar cookies start with a German chocolate cake mix. Melted caramels and cranberry sauce form a moist middle layer.

Cranberry Candy-Bar Cookies

Avalon International Breads in Detroit sells these drop cookies.

Avalon’s Oatmeal-Raisin Cookies

A Hanover, Kansas, reader sent the recipe for these chocolate cookies with peanut butter centers to a Midwest Living® cookie contest. A judge described them as "regally rich chocolate with a peanut butter kick."

Peanut Butter Munchies

This recipe will satisfy chocolate lovers' cravings, with semisweet chocolate pieces, unsweetened chocolate, melted white chocolate and melted semisweet chocolate. Just a half a cup of flour goes into this fudgy delight.

Hunka Chocolate Cookies

Dried fruit and crunchy almonds bring antioxidants and omega-3s to these bars made from two kinds of rice cereal--regular and chocolate flavored--in our version of marshmallow-cereal bars.

Crisp Cherry-Almond Bars with Marshmallows

When the afternoon hungries strike, cookies and other treats come to the rescue. We've added whole grains to some of these recipes so they're more nutritious. Take them to a potluck or out tailgating, too.

Sour Cream Pumpkin Bars

Oatmeal and More Cookies

Packed with flavor from molasses, ginger, cinnamon and brown sugar, these cookies look especially nice when cut with a scalloped or round cutter and sprinkled with coarse sugar or crystallized ginger.

Fat Molasses Cookies

An apple a day tastes even better in cookie form, especially with frosting on top!

Spiced Apple Drops

To make ginger juice, Patty Erd of the Spice House in Evanston, Illinois, squishes coarsely chopped fresh ginger in a clean garlic press.

Quadruple Ginger Cookies

Cinnamon and sugar coat these traditional crackled-top cookies. For a pumpkin-flavored version, try Pumpkin Doodle Doo Cookies.

Snickerdoodles

Pumpkin Doodle Doo Cookies

These cookies are almost like a miniature carrot cake. Top them with orange frosting and finely shredded orange peel for a cookie that's as beautiful as it is delicious. This recipe is from Nancee Allan of Centertown, Missouri, and "dates back to the 1940s at least," she says. "My mother, Helen Kaufmann, and our next-door neighbor, Georgia Mae Wenkle, used to bake a lot of desserts. This was one of our favorites."

Mother Knows Best Carrot Cookies

Great with coffee or an afternoon snack, these cookies combine the fall flavors of cinnamon and cardamom, with sliced almonds on top.

Cinnamon Cardamom Crisps

Stir together just 6 ingredients for this easy-to-make treat. Peanuts top a rich layer of butter, marshmallows, peanut butter-flavored pieces, sweetened condensed milk, and peanut butter.

Salted Peanut Squares

The Cole family of Wadsworth, Ohio, bakes these each year for friends and family. The tradition started more than 50 years ago when Phrania (Fran) Cole and her sister, Ann, began baking cookies as affordable gifts. With the Snowballs, the Coles like the tang of black walnut and the snowy look that comes from powdered sugar. The Nutjammers are another old favorite. You can choose from two fillings when you make these tiny, turnoverlike treats.

Snowballs recipe

Nutjammer Cookies

These sour cream cookies, decked with orange-butter frosting, come from a longtime Wright's Bake Shop recipe in Reed City, Michigan.

Halloween Cutouts

Chocolate, raisins, pecans, almonds, brown sugar—this recipe has it all, in an easy drop cookie. They are a dream to eat as well as to make.

Dream Jumbles

Crisp on the outside and fudgy on the inside, these treats are easy drop cookies that feature semisweet chocolate pieces as well as peanut butter flavored pieces. Unsweetened cocoa powder punches up the chocolate flavor.

Chocolate Lovers' Oatmeal Delight

Wheat flour, flaxseed, applesauce and dried fruit add good-for-you ingredients to the traditional chocolate chip cookie.

Healthy Chocolate Chippers

Click below for more delicious Midwest Living fall recipe ideas.