I love baking with pumpkin. Surprise right? But something happened this year. Perhaps our fall foliage vacation? Perhaps life got busy? Who knows – but this is (gasp) my first pumpkin recipe this fall. Shocking, I know – usually by this time of year I’ve made some pumpkin blondies, pumpkin granola, pumpkin biscotti and/or some sort of pumpkin scone. Oh well. Guess I have some catching up to do!

Even if this is the only pumpkin cookie recipe I make this year – I’d still declare it a good year. These pumpkin cookies are soft (as a pumpkin cookie should be), have the perfect amount of spice (in the batter and also thanks to the cinnamon-sugar coating – they are snickerdoodles after all!) and the pumpkin spice chips are OH so good. I made a batch and they somehow quickly disappeared … guess I know what to do with the remaining can of pumpkin I have!

Pumpkin Chip Snickerdoodles

Here’s what you need:

• 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 3/4 cup pumpkin puree
• 3 cups  all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 TBS ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1 teaspoon allspice
• 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1 cup pumpkin spice chips (I found these beauties at Target)

• For rolling: Approximately 1/2 cup cinnamon-sugar mixture (I keep this on hand but if you don’t have it, mix 1/2 cup sugar with 1 TBS cinnamon)

Here’s what you do:

1. Melt the butter in the microwave. In a medium bowl, whisk the melted butter, brown sugar, and 1/2 cup granulated sugar together until no brown sugar lumps remain. Whisk in the vanilla and pumpkin until smooth. Set aside.
2. In a large bowl, sift together the flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, ginger, allspice and nutmeg. Set aside.
3. Combine melted butter with granulated sugar, brown sugar, vanilla and pumpkin puree. Mix well so that batter is smooth and no lumps from the sugar remain. Slowly pour wet ingredients into the dry flour mixture and mix together by hand with a spatula.
4. Fold in pumpkin spice morsels.
5. Cover the dough and chill for at least 20-30 minutes, or overnight. Believe it or not, I made my dough at night and chilled the dough while I slept.
6. After dough is chilled, preheat the oven to 350F degrees. Line a cookie baking sheet with parchment paper.
7. Roll the dough into balls, about 1-2 Tablespoons in size. The dough will be sticky! Roll the dough balls into cinnamon-sugar mixture. Place on baking sheet.
8. Bake the cookies for 8-10 minutes. The cookies will look underdone when you take them out of the oven – this is okay! You don’t want a dry pumpkin cookie.
9. Let cookies cool for at least 15 or so minutes. They taste even better a day  (or two) after baking!  Mine made about 36 cookies.