Whip up a batch or 2 of these dream-worthy Soft Maple Brown Sugar Cookies! They literally melt-in-your mouth and if you love maple syrup based goodies and the old-fashioned Amish drop cookie vibe with a modern twist, then you’ll love these whole-heartedly.
These heavenly Soft Maple Brown Sugar Drop Cookies are so soft, thick and amazing to bite into and they’re perfected with warm ingredients like maple syrup, brown sugar, applesauce and cinnamon (yum!) inside and then the tops of the cookies are dipped and dripping in a super easy, buttery maple syrup icing!
These are definitely maple-icious!
The best part, besides eating them of course, is how easy they are to make.
No rolling, no cookie cutters, no chilling the dough, no frosting and no weird ingredients. The ingredients used are pretty much always on hand, which is always a good thing, right?
I get asked a lot to make vegan or eggless desserts, and so I came up with these to test your palette.
I prefer to use applesauce, but The Spruce has a great article and chart on choices to use, whether you have a dairy allergy or the need or desire to cut saturated fat.
My son is vegan and his girlfriend eats a lot of vegan food and it seems the vegan diet is becoming more and more mainstream, with people cutting out animal products for environmental, ethical and health reasons.
But whether you eat eggs or don’t, you won’t even miss the eggs in these cookies. The applesauce does the job, so the cookies are super moist and soft!
If you love soft cookies, these Soft Lemon & Blueberry Explosion Cookies are totally irresistible, along with these Ultimate Soft Caramel Apple Drop Cookies and these Ultimate Soft Chocolate Drop Cookies.
What you should know about these Soft Maple Brown Sugar Cookies…
It’s nice to use a medium-sized scoop to get nice looking cookies. One batch makes 14 cookies and these cookies spread, but not much and they are about a 1/2 inch thick to 3/4 inch thick in the middle. Let cookies rest and set on cookie pan after pulling from oven. My perfect oven time is 12 minutes.
Use parchment paper if you can, parchment is my best friend in the kitchen, when baking. If not, lightly spray with non-stick cooking spray or use a silpat.
These cookies without the icing are not heavily sweetened, so, if you were wanting to omit the icing for whatever reason, feel free to add in a little maple extract or use sweetened applesauce for a little more sugar. I use the unsweetened applesauce that is packaged as a six-pack and each one measures 1/2 cups, which means easy measuring. Yassireeee!
But, if you’re all in for a really good cookie, add the buttery maple glaze. These cookies are best when they are completely cooled with icing set. Milk on the side, please.
Soft Maple Brown Sugar Cookies
Ingredients
Soft Batch Maple Brown Sugar Cookies
- 1/2 cup butter room temperature or dairy-free butter option
- 1/3 cup brown sugar
- 1/3 cup pure maple syrup
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- ½ cup applesauce
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1 & 3/4 cups all purpose flour
- 1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1/2 tsp salt
Buttery Maple Glaze - Will cover 2 batches of cookies if you do a double batch.
- 1/4 cup unsalted butter or dairy-free butter option
- 1/2 cup pure maple syrup
- 1 ¼ cups sifted confectioners’ sugar
- ¼ teaspoon salt
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350°F. Line cookie sheet with parchment paper and set aside.
Softest Maple Brown Sugar Cookies
- In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, cinnamon, salt and baking powder and set aside.
- Using mixer, cream the butter and brown sugar together for 2 minutes, then add maple syrup until mixed well.
- Add in applesauce, vanilla extract and beat for an additional minute. Add in flour mixture and mix to incorporate. You should have a very soft dough.
- Using a 1 ½ tablespoon or medium cookie scoop to scoop cookies onto prepared cookie sheets.
- Bake cookies for 12 minutes. Remove the cookies from the oven and allow them to sit on the baking sheet, untouched, for 10 minutes.
Buttery Maple Icing
- Using microwave, melt the butter and maple syrup together for 1 ½ - 2 minutes. Once the butter has melted, remove from microwave and whisk in the sifted confectioners’ sugar and salt. Set glaze aside and allow to cool and thicken while cookies cool. If icing is too thick, heat up in microwave 15-30 second increments to get icing consistency needed.
- Dip each cookie into the maple icing by dipping the tops in, then place dipped cookies on wire rack or parchment paper to set.
Nutrition

Ok.. I made these just as the recipe calls for with the exception of adding a little maple extract to just give it a little more umph.. let me tell you these are not cookies..: these are little cloud cakes sent from the gods.. they are so soft and good.. they are on the really sweet side but they are a perfect “treat yo self” cookie.. I would suggest sharing with friends and family or else you might get diabetus haha… the only issue I had was with the dip I guess they were still a little warm or are just that soft I had a couple want to break but they didn’t.. really good recipe!