Roseyland

Today I am going share with you one of my favorite recipes. Pumpkin cookies. I pretty much love pumpkin anything, but these cookies are the best pumpkin food I know. I’ve heard that pumpkin doesn’t actually have much taste, and that what most people think is pumpkin is really just the spices. Whatever, it still taste good. Here are the ingredients:

• 1 cup butter
• 1 cup dark brown sugar
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 3 cups flour
• 1 15-ounce can pumpkin

Here are the ingredients in graphical form. The wine isn’t an ingredient, I just find that it helps the cooking process go a little smoother. In case you are wondering, the wine is a Chambourcin from the Stone Hill Winery in Hermann, Missouri. I thought the wine was great, but I know nothing about wine. Also, note the new KitchenAid mixer. The mixer is my Christmas present from my Mom and Stepdad. They are coming St. Louis for Thanksgiving, so we are doing Christmas then. They had the mixer sent directly to me, and my Mom told me not to open the package until Thanksgiving. Sure thing Mom.

First step: cream together the butter and sugars. This goes much better if you let the butter soften up first.

This is a picture of the first time I have ever used a mixer. Actually, this is the second time. The first time I didn’t realize that the mixing bowl needed to be locked into place. The mixer was so mad at me that it nearly threw the bowl of butter and sugar across the room, which in turn sent the cat running for his life and knocking over my neatly stacked spices in the process. This is why I drink wine when I cook.

Once the butter and sugar are combined, add the eggs and vanilla extract. Then combine the dry ingredients and add them to the mixture. When you are done, it should look something like this.

Now add the can of pumpkin and let the mixer do its thing. If you wanted to, you could also add some chopped walnuts at this stage. Again, I have deep seated political and religious objections to nuts in my dessert food, so we won’t be adding walnuts today. When you are done, it will look like the picture below. The batter is wetter than most cookie batters, and it is delicious. Of course it does contain raw eggs, but if that scares you away, you shouldn’t be cooking anything.

Drop the batter by the spoonful onto a cookie sheet. Then bake at 350 degrees for 10 to 11 minutes. The cookies below are probably a little too big, but I like big cookies.

The difficult part about baking these cookies is that it is hard to know when they are done. They come out as a soft cookie, which is great, but the whole toothpick test just doesn’t work on them. The toothpick doesn’t come out clean unless the cookies are well over cooked. Do you see the wispy tips on top of the cookie? When those tips just start to turn golden brown, the cookies are done. You can also break one open and see if it looks like a cookie on the inside. Then eat the broken cookie so that nobody knows you broke it.

Be careful with the cookies when you remove them from the cookie sheet. They are soft and smoosh easily. Note the color of the bottom of the cookie below. If it was any darker than this, I would consider the cookie over cooked, and I am the pumpkin cookie professional here.

Here is a picture of the cookies on a plate. I have this new recipe software for organizing my recipes, and you can include a picture with each recipe. It’s so cool. I had to take this picture to put in the program. Now that I look at it, I probably should have used a flash. Oh well.

I like these cookies plain, but you can also frost them with a Maple Butter Cream Frosting. You can download a pdf version of this recipe along with the Maple Butter Cream Frosting recipe here. Did you know a Mac can print pretty much anything to a .pdf file? Nice. Let me know if you make these cookies, they are perfect for Thanksgiving. Oh, and one more thing. Sometimes the tops of these cookies become a little sticky after a day or so. It’s kind of like the cookie part of an ice cream sandwich and the way it can stick to your fingers a little. These cookies can do the same thing. No big deal, I just thought I should mention it.