I have fond childhood memories of baking chocolate chip cookies with my my mom and sister. When my sister and I saw our mom’s circa 1972 split pea green KitchenAid Stand Mixer come out, we knew we were in for a treat.
The process of helping my mom in the kitchen and being her little helper was almost as good as the cookies we’d bake together.
My dad always knew if my sister and I had been in the kitchen that day helping out as evidenced by the eggshells in his cookies, which we’d proudly present to him and that he’d never turn down. They simply added a delicious crunch.
As a helper, I learned early on not to crank the mixer to high speed immediately after adding the flour. A good way to make my mom mad was to spray her kitchen with flour.
The best part of cookie making came when adding the chocolate chips to the dough.
I’d always sneak a handful of chocolate chips that were supposed to make it into the cookie dough, but made it into my mouth instead.
With this cookie recipe, I wanted to embrace the classic chocolate chip cookie I grew up eating, but also incorporate everyone’s favorite fall ingredient: pumpkin.
Plenty of recipes exist for soft, cake-like, pumpkin whoopie pie cookies, but I wanted these cookies to have the traditional chewiness of a true chocolate chip cookie, but infused with pumpkin.
After testing and experimenting with so many recipes and creating everything from cakey, soft, pumpkin mounds to pumpkin-laced hockey pucks, I finally found the texture and flavor I was in search of with this recipe.
The resulting cookies are soft, tender, light and have just a touch of cakiness, but they are also chewy with some heartiness. Soft pumpkin cookie meets chewy chocolate chip cookie. The edges crisp up and the centers remain pillowy soft.
They’re packed with the warming flavors of fall, including cinnamon, pumpkin pie spice, cloves, and a dash of molasses.
The chocolate chips pair nicely with the pumpkin and the flavors complement each other so well. Then again, chocolate pairs so well with most anything for me.
A few cook’s notes:
The dough is soft and a bit tacky to work with, courtesy of the pumpkin puree. Pumpkin does a beautiful job of tenderizing baked goods, but it makes the dough a bit sticky. Counteract the stickiness by chilling the dough before scooping it into balls. In my trials, I chilled the dough ranging from 90 minutes to 4 days. The longer the dough is chilled, the easier it is to work with.
Prior to baking, rolling a ball of dough through a cinnamon-sugar mixture not only creates a extra bonus of texture and flavor in the finished cookies, but it does double-duty by taking the edge off some of the dough’s stickiness.
I found the best cookies result from using 1 1/2 tablespoons of well-chilled dough, scooped using a cookie scoop, dredged through cinnamon-sugar, and flattened slightly before baking.
The cookies spread very little while baking and I recommend flattening the dough mounds slightly before baking otherwise the base will cook through and become too well done before the top sets.
The cookies keep beautifully, and paradoxically, get softer over time. The brown sugar and molasses attract moisture from the air so there’s little worry of them drying out.
Then again, I don’t think you’ll have too many extra cookies just lingering around.
[print_this]
Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies
Makes about 3 dozen medium-sized cookies
1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened (1 stick)
3/4 cup light brown sugar, packed
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
3/4 cup canned pumpkin puree (not pumpkin pie filling)
1 tablespoon unsulphered molasses (I use Grandma’s Original)
3/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg, ground ginger, salt – all optional and to taste
3 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 cups Nestle Tollhouse Semi-Sweet Morsels
Cinnamon-Sugar Mixture, for rolling
1/3 cup granulated sugar
3/4 teaspoon cinnamon
To the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine butter, brown sugar, 1/2 cup granulated sugar, and beat on medium-high to high speed for 3 to 4 minutes to cream ingredients; stop and scrape down the sides of the bowl. Add the egg, vanilla, and beat on high speed for 3 to 4 minutes until mixture is light and fluffy. Add the pumpkin, unsulphered molasses (blackstrap molasses may be substituted but it’s bolder and more intense), 3/4 teaspoon cinnamon, pumpkin pie spice, cloves, optional spices, salt, and mix until incorporated, about 1 minute. (All spices should be added to taste and use more or less, depending on how robustly-flavored you prefer your cookies. As written, the spices are nicely balanced and the cookies are of average intensity. Adding ginger, additional cinnamon or cloves, will give them a stronger punch and kick, rendering them more like a pumpkin-ginger-spice cookie)
Add the flour, baking soda, and mix until just combined. Fold in the chocolate chips by hand. Dough will be thick and dense yet soft, and must be refrigerated and chilled before it’s suitable for scooping out and baking off. Cover mixing bowl with plastic wrap or transfer dough into an airtight container and refrigerate dough for at least 90 minutes, overnight, or up to four days.
Preheat oven to 350F. Prepare baking sheets by lining them with Silpat liners, parchment paper, or spray them with cooking spray; set aside. Make the Cinnamon-Sugar Mixture by combining 1/3 cup granulated sugar and 3/4 teaspoon cinnamon in a small bowl and stir to combine; set aside.
Form 1 1/2 tablespoon-sized balls of dough using a cookie scoop and dredge each ball through the cinnamon-sugar mixture. Place balls on baking sheets; cookies spread very little and can be spaced about 2 inches apart on baking sheets. Flatten balls slightly before baking to ensure cookies cook through evenly. Bake for 12-13 minutes or until the edges near the bases of the cookies are golden and set, and tops have just set; cookies will continue to firm up as they cool. Allow cookies to cool on baking sheets for at least 10 minutes before moving them. Cookies will keep in an airtight container at room temperature for up to one week or in the freezer for up to 3 months.
Cookies can be kept vegan by using vegan margarine such as Earth Balance and replacing the egg with a flax egg. Cookies can be made gluten-free by using a gluten-free flour blend such as Bob’s Red Mill.
[/print_this]
And now, onto the Giveaway portion of this post. You can enter to win:
a $200 gift card from Williams-Sonoma
and a KitchenAid Stand Mixer
Yes, one lucky person will win both.
The mixer is from the KitchenAid Custom Metallic® Series | Tilt-Head Stand Mixer | Flour Powerâ„¢ Rating – 9 Cup
It’s a 5-Quart size with a 10-speed Solid State Control
It comes with a flat beater, wire whip, and dough hook
It retails for $649.95
I’m sure I don’t need to sell you on the benefits, workmanship, and high quality nature of a KitchenAid Stand Mixer or twist your arm to pick out $200 worth of items from Williams-Sonoma.
Although Tweets, Facebook mentions, or Pinterest Pins about this post are appreciated, they are not required for entry.
Simply answer the following question by leaving a comment below to enter the giveaway:
Please share a favorite baking memory. (Please be detailed and specific)
Contest ends Monday, October 8, 2012 and winner will be chosen randomly. Open to continental U.S. residents only. Complete contest rules can be found at the bottom of this page.
This post is sponsored by Nestlé® Toll House® Morsels, the perfect special ingredient for all of your family’s favorite treats!
When I was 10 my mom and I decided to make her birthday cake together using an old, chocolate cake recipe from scratch. It was passed down from my grandmother, so we knew it was a winner. We did something wrong along the way, however, because it tasted absolutely awful. So we laughed all night and made chocolate chip cookies instead :)
katherinedibello (at) gmail (dot) com
What an amazing giveaway!!! I can’t get over it. One of my favorite baking memories is making Christmas cookies with my partner. We made sugar cookies and froze half of the batter so that we could make them down the line. One day I came home from work after a really rough day, and the house smelled incredible. He had baked the cookies, and we sat in front of the fire eating cookies. It was like Christmas in February, and it was wonderful. :)
Thinking about this question, i have different baking memories from various parts of my life, baking with my Gram, pre-Thanksgiving day baking with my mom and sisters and most recently, baking and sharing the love of it with my 5 and 6 y/o daughters.
My grandparents had once owned a bakery and made wedding cakes. Many moons ago when I was a little girl, my grandmother used to break out all her “stuff” and my sisters and I would stir, pour, mix, whatever it was this patient woman told us. Once the cakes were in the oven and the smell of delicious cake filled the air, we would turn our sites on frosting. The base of the frosting…crisco! (which makes me lol now) but she would sit there and try so hard to teach us how to make the little roses and flowers to decorate.
Glad she was able to do some baking with my girls and now I have her stuff to use with them. <3
A favorite cooking memory is baking a chocolate bundt cake with my grandmother. She is not known for being the best cook or baker, but one visit, we decided to make this cake together. The delicious smell wafted out of the oven as it baked and it came out gorgeous! We waited for it to cool a bit, cut into it, and tried it. It was HORRIBLE! It tasted incredibly salty. Turns out…we had mixed up the canisters of sugar and salt in the pantry. Even my dad, the man who hates to waste food and will eat any leftovers couldn’t stomach it :)
Not the most successful cake, but a funny story to look back on!
For Thanksgiving, freshman year of college, I traveled a few hours into the hills of central PA to visit my ailing great ant and uncle, who in their 80’s were living in the same house that my great uncle’s father built in 1913.
During my visit, my great aunt took the time and energy to patiently teach me one of our most difficult family baking recipes. It’s a variant on Croatian nut horns that has been passed down through the generations. As we pulled the last baking sheet out of the oven and sat down to get into a nut horn coma, she told me in the most genuine way that I did a good job making them. For a treasured family recipe, words like that always make a person proud.
One of my fondest baking memories was making my dad a birthday cake when I was around 9. It was such a big deal and I wanted it to be like a picture in the magazines…. it didn’t come close but he loved it so much and declared it the ‘best cake he’s ever had’…. true or not, it was the beginning of my love for cooking and showing my love through food.
My favorite baking memories don’t involve baking, but instead involved stealing bites of cookie dough when my mom was not looking. ;) All joking aside, some of my favorite childhood memories revolve around the smells of cinnamon, chocolate and warm melty cookies fresh from the oven. I believe that is what encouraged me to bake and to recreate those warm fuzzy feelings!
thank you for an amazing giveaway!!!
The most famous cooking memory is the year I was trying to eat healthy, and made the infamous tofu cheesecake. I tried to pass it off as real cheesecake and it did NOT go over well with the kids. They will never let me live it down! I am sure they will all have their own cooking disasters in the years to come. I sure would love to win that mixer and mix up some REAL cheesecake!
With all of the pumpkin recipes coming out of the bloggosphere, yours have been my fav. My ‘Yum’ board is going to be filled with your recipes…
My fondest memory of baking is also one of my earliest memories. It’s baking cookies with my mom from scratch. We had a set of colored measuring spoons and we got to use each spoon to measure an ingredient except for the largest yellow spoon, the tablespoon. The recipe didn’t call to use that spoon but I remember so badly wanting to get to scoop with the one unused, big spoon. It was just begging to be dipped in baking powder. Such a random memory but I guess it was an early sign that I was born to love baking!
Now that I’m beginning to cater treats at events, my 5qt mixer is too tiny for my production scale and I’ve been dreaming of having the beautiful machine in your contest.
my favorite baking moment was just a few months ago, when a few friends and i were trying to make gluten free cookies for our gluten free musician friend we were going to see on tour. we didn’t know what xanthan gum was. our mixer broke so we took turns whipping the dough with forks and woman muscles. everything kept going wrong. half of the cookies burned. we laughed the entire time, and it shouldn’t have been an amazing memory…but somehow it was. (by the end the cookies tasted damn good, might i add.)
My favorite baking memory was when I was 13. I was making these butter crunch cookies that my grandma makes a lot. It was my first time really baking even though I love sugar and anything including butter haha. I had never baked on my own before. I didn’t cream the butter and sugar together right and since the instructions were old and not detailed I ended up with terrible cookies. I remember practicing over and over to get it right. I constantly messed up the caramel bits and ended up with doughy cookies one day and tasteless ones the next. When I finally got the cookie recipe they were perfect, I remember being really excited about having finally done it right. They were chewy and sweet and salty and buttery.
So yeah that’s basically my favorite (:
My favorite memory is the sound of my mother’s rings tapping the sides of the pans as she floured them. I knew we were in for wonderful treats and cakes that would delight us all.
In middle school, I had the brilliant idea to bake cookies…ON A COOLING RACK! Nope, no cookie sheet. I was a smart kid and still have no idea why I thought this was a good idea. My mom wasn’t home at the time, but you can imagine the sight of my dad hurrying into the kitchen from the den upon smelling burning only to see cookie dough oozing, drooping, and hanging through each and every cooling-rack slat. Yikes! Thankfully, I’ve gotten past that major blooper and had all but forgotten about it until thinking about this question! Great giveaway.
Baking brownies from the recipe on the box of baker’s unsweetened chocolate with my brother as a child.
karenreichmann@hotmail.com
ALWAYS made Christmas cookies with mom and little sis. . . yearly tradition and many memories. But, the best was actually when I left for college and an old family friend bemoaned missing out on cookies (it was summertime!)
I can’t wait to try these cookies!
One of my favorite baking memories is from earlier this year. We were told my grandmother had a few weeks left, and as family and friends came to the house to visit her I made a lot of food. I cooked a chocolate coffee bundt cake made with Greek yogurt. It was the first time and it was delicious! My grandmother wasn’t eating anymore at the time, but 2 days later after hearing people talk about that cake she said she wanted a piece. It was the last thing she ate and she loved it.