caramel apple cookies

I am bringing cookies to my nephew's first birthday party today. We still have apples from the farm so I thought this would be a delicious and kid-friendly recipe to try. I found it on an inspiring blog by Katie Goodman called Goodlife Eats. Her recipes are both her own and adapted from other recipes out there but what really sells them are the photos. Here is the caramel apple cookie photo and recipe.

My cookies did not look like this until the last tray came out of the oven. The first batch spread out and formed one sheet of thin cookies. My guess is that I did not wait the entire hour for the dough to chill. The dough went back into the fridge for another 30 minutes. This time I placed only one tray into the oven and they did not spread. For the last tray, I rolled the chilled dough into balls and increased the temperature to 375 degrees. This worked the best. So, out of 3 1/2 dozen cookies, about 5 cookies look like the photo. They all taste good (if you don't mind a little caramel gripping your teeth), flat or rounded. There's something about oats that conveys warmth and coziness to a cookie.

I checked Heinen's and Giant Eagle for the Kraft caramel baking bits but came home with a bag of individually wrapped caramels. I cut them into quarters last night. Before kids, I would have embarked on a quest to find the baking bits even if the search monopolized my day. I'm thinking maybe Target...