Caramel Apple Spice Thumbprints Recipe

Similar to snickerdoodles and inspired by homemade caramel apples, caramel apple spice thumbprints are completely irresistible. These fall cookies are filled with homemade caramel and spiced with cinnamon, cardamom, and nutmeg.

Thumbprint cookies usually have a shortbread base or shortbread-like texture. Today’s thumbprints, however, are more like soft & thick snickerdoodles paired with apple spice and creamy caramel.

We call these “2-bite cookies” because they’re so petite and delicious that you can gobble them up in just 2 bites. They’re wonderful for any autumnal celebration or anytime you crave these warm and comforting flavors.

Tell Me About these Carmel Apple Spice Thumbprints

• Texture: You’ll enjoy a super soft cookie with a gooey caramel center.
• Flavor: Think of these as an elevated snickerdoodle cookie—one with apple pie spice and lots of buttery caramel. If you love snickerdoodles, you’ll also enjoy our pumpkin snickerdoodles and these white chocolate chai snickerdoodles. Or even snickerdoodle cake!
• Ease: This simple, straightforward cookie dough is really easy to prep. Don’t use store-bought caramel sauce here because it won’t properly set. Instead, use our simple 10-minute homemade salted caramel.
• Time: Prep time is about 30 minutes, but you’ll need to let the dough chill for 2 hours.

Some Key Ingredients in Caramel Apple Spice Thumbprints

• Flour: All-purpose flour serves as the base of these thumbprints. We use 2 and 1/2 cups to provide structure and shape.
• Apple pie spice: This is what makes these apple spice thumbprints…well, apple-spiced! Apple pie spice is pretty standard in our region, but if you don’t have access to store-bought apple pie spice, you can make your own with cinnamon, cardamom, and nutmeg. If you have leftover apple pie spice, use it in our apple cider donuts!
• Butter: 1 cup of butter adds flavor, structure, and buttery goodness in each bite. Make sure it’s properly softened to room temperature before beginning.
• Salted Caramel: We fill each thumbprint cookie with salted caramel. You can make this ahead of time or while the cookie dough chills. We reduce the salt in the salted caramel to 1/4 teaspoon so it’s regular caramel, not salted. (Don’t leave out the salt completely.) You can, of course, keep as regular salted caramel if you prefer.

Recipe Testing: What Works & What Doesn’t

Here are the tips and tricks we learned while testing this recipe.

Indenting thumbprints. This is our #1 trick for indenting thumbprint cookies. Instead of your thumb, use the end of a rubber spatula or wooden spoon instead. This hack is helpful because you don’t dirty your thumbs, get dough under your nail, touch all the cookies again, AND you obtain a perfectly uniform indent for every cookie in the batch. We do the same thing with our chocolate peppermint thumbprints too.

• Hint: If you find that the indents have lost their shape after the initial 12 minutes in the oven, just grab the end of your spatula again and press down to make a deeper indent. Deeper indent = bigger pool of caramel. (Obviously a good thing!)

Chilling the cookie dough at THIS stage is important. You want to chill the cookie dough AFTER coating the dough balls in the sugar-spice mix and making indents. Why? In recipe testing, we found that chilling the dough before indenting made it a little too firm. Chilling the dough after indenting was much easier. And if you chill the cookies at this stage, they’ll hold their shape much better when baked.

Caramel Filling. You want to add the caramel AFTER you bake the chilled + shaped cookies. At this point, remove the thumbprints from the oven, fill with caramel. Bake for an additional 1-2 more minutes to help set. The caramel is super gooey right out of the oven, but will set into chewy texture after a couple hours. That makes these caramel apple spice thumbprint cookies convenient for packing, gifting, and/or traveling. And a little less messy for teeny hands and hungry tummies!