Pumpkin Madness is starting early this year.
Don’t get me wrong, I love pumpkin and certain pumpkin flavored things like my mom’s recipe for Pumpkin Bread are in year round rotation at my house.
October and November seem to bring out a crazy level of pumpkin mania every year, but the recent explosion of Pinterest has taken pumpkin loving to a whole new level. That’s where I found this recipe for Pumpkin Snickerdoodles.
Good old soft traditional Snickerdoodles already have a lot of fall spices and flavors like cinnamon and nutmeg. Adding pumpkin to the mix seems like a great idea to me.
Here’s what you need:
Flour, Sugar, Butter, Egg, Salt, Baking Powder, Pumpkin, Vanilla, Cinnamon, Nutmeg, Allspice*, Cloves*, and Ginger* (or *Pumpkin Pie Spice Blend)
Click here for a Pumpkin Snickerdoodles Shopping List
Start with 2 sticks (1 cup) of softened, room temperature butter. Add 1½ cups granulated sugar and mix together until light and fluffy.
Add 1 egg, 2 teaspoons of vanilla,
and 3/4 cup of pumpkin.
This will leave you with about 1/2 of a can of pumpkin. Don’t throw it away! If you are an oatmeal eater, stir that pumpkin into the morning oatmeal for a great breakfast treat. You could stir it into some vanilla yogurt or add it to soup or pasta sauce.
Mix the pumpkin into the butter until it’s very smooth and creamy.
In a separate bowl, combine 3¾ cups flour with 1½ teaspoons baking powder and ½ teaspoon salt.
Add ½ teaspoon cinnamon and ½ teaspoon nutmeg and whisk the dry ingredients together until they are thoroughly combined.
With the mixer on the lowest speed, slowly add the flour to the pumpkin batter.
Be sure to scrape down the sides and the bottom of the bowl. Put the cookie dough in the refrigerator for about 20 minutes to chill for easier rolling.
While the dough chills, preheat the oven to 350 degrees and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
I wish someone had told me years ago about baking cookies on parchment. If you’ve never done it, give it a try. The parchment not only keeps the cookies from sticking, but it protects the bottom of the cookie from becoming overly brown in the oven. This is especially important for lighter cookies like snickerdoodles and sugar cookies.
In a small bowl, mix 1/2 cup granulated sugar with 1 teaspoon cinnamon, 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg, 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger, 1/4 teaspoon ground allspice, and 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves. OR you can use a couple of teaspoons of pumpkin pie spice mix. I prefer to have all of the different spices because I use them more frequently by themselves than pumpkin pie spice blend which I would only use once or twice a year.
Roll the cookie dough into small balls and coat them thoroughly in the sugar blend. Place them on the parchment line baking sheets leaving at least 1 inch around each ball for the cookies to expand.
I also like to give the balls a little gentle smish with my fingers to slightly flatten them out.
Bake at 350 degrees for 12 minutes or until puffy and slightly firm to the touch.
I think I can easily justify my love of pumpkin desserts this time of year. Baking things like these cookies, these amazing Pumpkin Spiced Donuts, or these incredible Pumpkin Bars with Cream Cheese Frosting makes the house smell wonderful and really gets me in the mood for fall.
Hey, I might not be able to shop out of the LLBean Winter Coat & Sweater catalog, but I can still have pumpkin madness with the best of them!
Here’s the recipe – adapted from dyln via pennies on a platter
4 Responses
Yum ! It looks very good !!
Oh, there is a certain pumpkin madness right now isn’t there? Poor pumpkins, they must be shivering in their pumpkin patches.
These look oh-so-yummy. I bet your house smells better than anyone else’s in the ‘hood when you bake these!
Wait a minute; LL Bean has a winter catalog??? 🙂
XOXO
Have you seen the pumpkin smoothie recipe on Pinterest? I can’t imagine drinking something cold right now (rainy and 40 degrees here) but you might appreciate it!
Pumpkin Pie Smoothie: 1/2 banana, 1/3 cup pumpkin puree, 1/3 cup plain Greek yogurt , 3/4 cup vanilla almond milk (or vanilla soy milk), few shakes of pumpkin pie spice, 4-5 ice cubes
And here’s another cold treat…
Pumpkin Frozen yogurt: 1 Cup Greek yogurt, 1 cup pumpkin puree, 1 T. Sugar, 1 t. pumpkin pie spice.
I’m sticking with pumpkin bread here. 😉