Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

If you haven't guessed from previous blog posts, I absolutely love pumpkin. Fall is my favorite time of year and I do a ton of baking during the fall and winter months. There is something very comforting about the smell of baked goods during the colder months which makes me feel very warm and homey. My husband and kids just love that they get all kinds of delicious food and sweets to try. A couple of years back I started making my own pumpkin puree due to my total inability to find any type of canned pure pumpkin. With so many freezer bags full of homemade puree I set out to find various recipes utilitizing the ingredient. I found a number of chocolate-chip cookie recipes that I was less than excited with and my family half-heartidly ate them. This year I tried a new recipe from the Food Network website and I was pleased with the result (and so were the rest of my household, who ate almost 60 of these cookies last week).

This recipe has 14 ingredients and yields approximately 60 cookies. The total time is 32 minutes, with 15 minutes of cooking time. The ingredients are very basic, I had every spice and dry good already in my pantry cupboard. Instead of using store-bought pumpkin puree I used the homemade pumpkin puree I made last month. This recipe would work just as well however, with the canned variety. Be very careful with the baking time for these cookies. My oven tends to run hot, so I turned my pans half-way through the baking. These cookies brown a little quickly, but if you take them out too soon they will be very cake-like in texture. If you prefer a less soft texture, I would flatten out the cookies with a cup or spoon before baking. I followed the remainder of the recipe as written, with no modifications.

These were a much bigger hit in my household than the previous chocolate-chip pumpkin cookie recipes that I have tried. This recipe does make a lot of cookies, so would be perfect for a party or a bake sale. However, the cookies are pretty small, so if you prefer you could make larger cookies or bake the batter in a 13 by 9 inch pan and bake them as bar cookies (with an adjusted cooking time). Overall, a delicious way to use fall flavors that takes very little time to prepare and cook, and would be a perfect baking activity with kids (my five-year-old was able to help with no problems).

For the recipe go to Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies.