Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

I love baking and I love Halloween so making this recipe was a lot of fun! I’m not sure what my kids and I love more; baking or taste-testing the final product. Since Halloween is right around the corner, I figured we could try making them into dinosaur footprint cookies by pressing a (cleaned) toy dinosaur’s foot into the dough ball to flatten them. Unfortunately, they puffed up in the oven and the footprint disappeared. To remedy this, we re-pressed the cookie fresh out of the oven. In the pictures below, my twins are pressing the dinosaur into the raw cookie dough balls. In the close-up picture, I’m pressing the dinosaur foot into the fresh-out-of-the-oven cookies.

Makes 20 cookies | Prep Time: 30 Minutes | Bake Time: 10 Minutes

Recipe Source: Sally’s Baking Addiction

Ingredients:

1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
6 tablespoons pumpkin purée
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon allspice
1/2 cup chocolate chips

*Use 1 and 1/2 teaspoons of pumpkin pie spice instead of nutmeg, cloves, and allspice, if desired. Don’t leave out the cinnamon. I like to add a lot of spices to increase the cookies’ spice/pumpkin flavour. Go by your spice preference.

Directions:

• In a medium bowl, whisk the melted butter, brown sugar, and granulated sugar together until no brown sugar lumps remain. Whisk in the vanilla and pumpkin until smooth. Set aside.

• In a large bowl, toss together the flour, salt, baking powder,

  

  baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, and cloves.

• Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix together with a large spoon or rubber spatula. The dough will be very soft.

• Fold in 1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips. They may not stick to the dough because of the melted butter, but do your best to have them evenly dispersed among the dough.
• Cover the dough and chill for 30 minutes, or up to 3 days. Chilling is mandatory.
• Take the dough out of the refrigerator. Preheat the oven to 350F degrees. Line two large baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mats.
• Roll the dough into balls, about 1.5 Tablespoons of dough each. Slightly flatten the dough balls because the cookies will only slightly spread in the oven.

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  Bake the cookies for 8-10 minutes. The cookies will look very soft and underbaked. Keeping them in the oven for longer may dry them out.

• Remove from the oven and press a few more chocolate chips onto the tops, if desired. If you find that your cookies didn’t spread much at all, flatten them out when you take them out of the oven.

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  Allow the cookies to cool for at least 10 minutes on the cookie sheets before transferring to a wire rack. The longer the cookies cool, the chewier they will be. I let them sit out for at least 1 hour before enjoying. I find that their chewiness and pumpkin flavor is more prominent on day 2. Cookies stay soft, moist, and chewy stored at room temperature for up to 1 week.

Freezing directions: Roll the chilled dough into balls and freeze in a large ziplock bag for up to 2 months. Baked cookies may also be frozen up to 2 months.