You don’t see many Southern recipes for apple cookies. What apples do well here are made into sauces, pies, or cakes. A quick scan of Southern Sideboards, Bayou Cuisine, River Road Recipes, Vintage Vicksburg, Gourmet of the Delta, The Jackson Cookbook, and The Mississippi Cookbook turned up nary a one. But I did find a recipe in Hosford Fontaine’s Allison’s Wells: The Last Mississippi Spa, and it’s superb: rich, moist, and aromatic.
3 cups of unpeeled diced apples (I use Galas)
2 sticks butter, softened
¾ cup sugar
¾ cup brown sugar
3 eggs, lightly beaten
2 cups flour
1 tablespoon grated orange peel
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon
A half teaspoon each ground cloves, nutmeg, and salt
2 cups rolled oats
¼ cup white raisins
¼ cup chopped pecans
Cream butter and sugars well, add eggs and flour mixed and sifted with spices and baking powder. Stir in apples, oats and nuts, then refrigerate dough for about 30 minutes, stirring once. Form dough into ping pong balls and bake on a lightly oiled cookie sheet with parchment paper at 350 or until lightly browned. Cool on a wire rack. This recipe makes about two dozen wonderful, chewy, cookies.
