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.
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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.
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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!
Those cookies look scrumptious!
My favorite baking memory has to be baking with my mom the night before a class party in elementary school. I was always ambitious, she was never much of a baker, so we compromised with boxed cake mixes. Still, sitting on the kitchen floor with her and looking into through the oven’s clear window to watch batches of yellow cake cupcakes slowly rise out of their tins has to be one of my favorite memories in the kitchen.
Every year at Christmastime my mother and I make piles and piles of pizzelles using the pizzelle iron that belonged to my great-grandmother, who used to make HUNDREDS of them every year and give them away to friends and family. Her apartment was such a lovely place to be with the smell of anise in the warm kitchen, surrounded by piles of delicious cookies!
A favorite baking memory for me is baking with my grandma. Every Sayurday morning, we would make Betty Crocker blueberry muffins together. I loved eating those with her and miss those days dearly.
Favorite baking memory? That would be baking bread with my grandmother in the wood fired oven, the big one, so called “black oven”, you can often see though out the Europe. That was a whole process, when she started the dough on Friday to be baked on Saturday. As a little girl I was always helping, first with egg washing the bread, then as I became older, I was helping with the forming of the breads. I remember how the dough felt in my hands: soft, silky, warm… Years later, when I had my own family, I decided to bake my own bread. I didn’t know the recipe, I just started with five basic ingredients my grandmother used: flour, yeast, sugar, salt and water, and my hands did the rest. It was the most amazing moment in my life at that point: my hands re-created my grandmother’s recipe by memory of feeling. :)
Great cookies!
Fave baking memory: holiday baking parties with friends and family “back in the day.” Loved ones who I rarely see often now. There is nothing quite like those cookie swaps we used to thrown, with all the kitchen banter, messes, fun, and laughter.
When I was younger, on Saturdays I made pancakes for my brothers. They would eat them as fast as I could make them. That was a nicer, simpler time.
My dad was a big pie guy, so every Christmas my mum did it up: squash pie, pumpkin pie, mince meat pie, and, of course, apple pie. We’d spend the day before peeling potatoes and carrots for the dinner, and lots and lots of apples. We’d roll out little cinnamon sugar crisps from the leftover dough. She didn’t use recipes, and always waved away my requests that she write instructions for me. Her apple pie is my favorite pie in the world, and now that she’s gone, I follow her example and make it up as I go. I haven’t succeeded 100% yet, but every time I get a little closer.
Thanks for the chance to revisit the memory.
Last Thanksgiving, my close friend and I got together to make all sorts of yummy treats – pumpkin pie, blondies, cookies, etc. We had so much fun (making it and eating it too)! :)
My favorite baking memory is baking Christmas cookies with my parents and my two brothers. Now that we all live across the country, it is harder to do but we try to bake at least one batch together before Christmas when everyone comes home.
My mom has never been much of a cook or baker, but we did make green spritz trees for Christmas every year and we would decorate them with those red hard cinnamon candies and lots of sprinkles – the sugar kind and the jimmies/shots kind. Of course I have to make them myself now but my kid and husband never appreciate them as much as I wish they would. Alas!
When I was a teenager my grandfather lived with us for awhile. Every weekend we would bake brownies together. He would always tell me stories about him growing up and how he used to bake brownies with his dad. I haven’t forgot any of his stories or how good our brownies tasted.
First of all, these cookies look divine!! Next, thank you for hosting this awesome giveaway!
Favorite baking memory is definitely when I would spend the day with my nan baking cakes and making cookies. It was then that baking became my happy place and it still is :)
I remember when I was around 8 or 9 and it was winter time. My mother worked at the time and my sister, who was supposed to be watching me, was no where to be found. I loved to bake so I thought i would bake brownies for dessert. I thought I did a pretty good job with the mixing, putting the batter in the pan and putting them in the oven. Much to my dismay, when I took the pan out they were rock hard. I did’t want my mother to come home from work and find her good baking pan ruined. So, being the 8 year old I was, I took it outside and threw it in the bushes on the side of the house. No one noticed anything until springtime when my mother went to do her gardening. Lo and behold, there was the pan!!!. We had a good laugh over it and I promised never to throw her good pans in the bushes again.
I like reading cooking blogs/cookbooks and taking photos of food more than the actual cooking, but I have always loved baking. One lovely baking memory I have was from about 6 years ago, when my three sons were in grammar school. Before I wore it out, I made fresh bread in my dad’s old bread machine a couple times per week, and my boys loved taking fresh bread to school in their lunches! I made a lot of peanut butter, chocolate, and pumpkin breads, plus sandwiches made from fresh wheat bread. My eldest told me that he sometimes got just a few bites of his sandwiches because his friends were fascinated by the homemade things he brought to eat. I started packing him some extra goodies for his friends!
My favorite memory of baking was making cookies one night when my mom was out and my dad and I needed something sweet so we found a cherry nut cake mix that said it could be made into cookies. The box stated it made about 3 dozen but we actually only got about 10 pancake sized cookies because neither one of us are known for our patience so we decided to go big. Needless to say one cookie was about all it took to satisfy our sweet tooths.