Keeping Count of a Destroyed Prefab and manipulating what happens with it...

This a basic 2d Cookie click game and my goal is to make a sort of golden cookie event spawn and change different values. For now though my main goal is to just destroy the object with a click and add up how many I have clicked so far. I have tried a ton of different and researched all day on ways to do it. I feel as though the answer is really simple and I am just missing something. I already have the "apples" randomly spawning. I linked the script below of what i have tried so far with 0 success. I can make the object disappear but i can't get the game to add up the total amount clicked. The object is a simple prefab with a circlecollider2d with Trigger checked. Thanks.

using UnityEngine; using System.Collections;

 public class Apple : MonoBehaviour {
     
     public int realApplesClicked;
 
     void Start()
     {
         realApplesClicked = 0;
         Destroy (this.gameObject, 10);
     }
 
 
     public void OnMouseDown()
     {
         if(Input.GetMouseButton (0))
         {
             realApplesClicked += 1;
             Destroy (this.gameObject);
         }
     }
 
     /*void OnTriggerEnter(Collider other)
     {
         if (other.gameObject.tag == "Applee") 
         {
             realApplesClicked += 1;
             Destroy (this.gameObject);
             //OnMouseDown ();
         }
 
     }*/
             
 
     /*public void OnMouseDown()
     {
         realApplesClicked += 1;
         Destroy (this.gameObject);
     }*/
 }