Pumpkin Snickerdoodles

It is fall, which means at my house it is time for all things fall. It is time to start making roasts and chili. It is time for warm apple cider and marshmallows on the bonfire. And, it is time for Pumpkin! Not that you would guess from the several pumpkin recipes that I have shared already or anything (find those treats here - this recipe will come up on the search too).

I'm always on the hunt for more ways to enjoy pumpkin flavors, so I decided to try a new cookie recipe - Pumpkin Snickerdoodles. I found the inspiration on Pinterest.

Pumpkin Snickerdoodles with white chocolate chips

1 cup butter melted
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar, divided
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
3/4 cup pumpkin
3 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
4 teaspoons cinnamon, divided
2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice
1 cup white chocolate chips

Yield: 64 cookies

Melt the butter in the microwave. In a medium bowl, whisk the melted butter, brown sugar, and 1 cup granulated sugar together until no brown sugar lumps remain. Whisk in the vanilla and pumpkin until smooth. Set aside.

In a large bowl, combine the flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda, 3 tsp cinnamon and pumpkin pie spice. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix together until combined. Fold in white chocolate chips. Cover and chill for 30 minutes.

Remove the dough from the refrigerator and roll into balls. Mix together the remaining 1/2 cup of granulated sugar and 1 teaspoon of cinnamon. Roll each of the dough balls generously in the cinnamon-sugar mixture and arrange on baking sheet. Slightly flatten the dough balls before baking.

Bake the cookies for 8-10 minutes at 350. They will still be soft when you remove from the oven, you can flatten the cookies out a little more when you take them out of the oven. Allow the cookies to cool for at least 10 minutes on the cookie sheets before transferring to a wire rack. Cool completely and store in an airtight container.

Disclaimer

Pumpkin Bread

After making the Pumpkin Swirl Cheesecake for Thanksgiving, I found myself with leftover pumpkin. I only had a large can at home, so my leftovers were just over 15 oz. I wanted to make something easy with the pumpkin, so I looked for a bread type recipe in my collection. I have made some in the past, but I don't think this was the one - unfortunately, I hadn't written any of them in my cookbook, so I was left guessing. I decided to add chocolate chips to one of the loaves of bread, I didn't have minis, which I prefer in bread, so I used regular chocolate chips.

Ingredients:
2 1/2 cups sugar
1 cup canola oil
3 eggs
1 (15-ounce) can pumpkin (or 15 oz fresh pumpkin)
3 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup mini semisweet chocolate chips (optional)

Preheat oven to 350.

Spray the bottom of two bread pans with cooking spray.

Blend the flour, baking soda, spices and salt, set aside.

Combine the sugar, eggs, oil and pumpkin in a bowl. Stir with a whisk until combined.

Fold in the dry ingredients, stirring until combined. If you are adding chocolate chips, add them and stir to combine.

Pour into two prepared bread pans. Baked for 50 - 55 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Cool for a few minutes in pans before turning out.

Disclaimer

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

As I mentioned yesterday, I tried two Pumpkin Cookie recipes on Sunday. This one was found on AllRecipes. I essentially followed the recipe, only skipping the walnuts and increasing the baking time.

These cookies are similar to a sugar cookie recipe that I love that uses oil instead of a solid fat, uses both baking powder and baking soda, and uses milk.

These cookies turned out a nice rich color and with the addition of the cinnamon had a nice pumpkin spice type of flavor.

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies
makes 3 dozen cookies

1 cup pumpkin pureed
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 egg
2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon milk
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350.

Combine pumpkin, sugar, oil, egg, and vanilla. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, cinnamon and salt. Dissolve the baking soda in milk. Add the milk to the pumpkin. Add flour mixture to pumpkin and mix well. Add the chocolate chips.

Bake for 15 minutes.

Since I liked different aspects of both cookies, the next logical step was to combine the two batters. After baking the 3 dozen of each, I had some extra batter so I mixed them and baked that for 16 minutes. The result was interesting, I think I liked it. The one in the middle is the blend:

Disclaimer

Pumpkin Cake Mix Cookies

After making our Pumpkin Marble Cheesecake this weekend, I was left with about 3 cups of fresh, pureed pumpkin that I wanted to use up before it had time to go bad. I decided that it would be used to make cookies. I found two recipes that both sounded good to me and decided I would make both recipes.

The first was a cake mix recipe. I am a fan of convenience and like that it had two ingredient - pumpkin and cake mix. Now, I will admit that at first I was a little skeptical about this recipe, it sounded very similar to a muffin recipe, so I was worried that it wouldn't hold on the pan and would run off. I did make a minor adjustment and added a bit of baking soda so that they would rise and not flatten. I also added butterscotch and white chocolate chips to this batch.

The cookies turned out very moist and cake like. My son really enjoyed the addition of the butterscotch chips.

Pumpkin Cake Mix Cookies
1 box yellow cake mix
1 3/4 c fresh pumpkin puree
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 c butterscotch chips
1/2 c white chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350.

Combine the cake mix, pumpkin and baking soda in a bowl. Mix until combined. Stir in chips.

Drop by spoonful onto cookie sheet. Bake for 20 minutes. Cool on pan for a few minutes before transferring to a cooling rack.


Disclaimer

Pumpkin Marble Cheesecake

One of my favorite fall flavors is Pumpkin. At our house, we enjoy treats like Pumpkin Pudding and Pumpkin Sherbert year round - made from canned pumpkin. In the fall though, I prefer to bake with fresh pumpkin.

After Halloween, we take our small 'pie' pumpkins and roast them up in the oven, scoop out the meat and mash it. Then, of course, we roast the seeds. This year, we roasted two pumpkins and got about 4 cups of pumpkin puree from them.

Since it was just the four of us at our Thanksgiving meal this year (we had had Thanksgiving with my extended family the weekend before), I decided to go with a pumpkin cheesecake this year, instead of the traditional pie. I tried and tweaked a new recipe. It was well received by the family. I think that the fact that it only used two packages of cream cheese was part of the secret - it gave a better texture, as it was able to cook more evenly then some of the larger, thicker recipes we have had in the past. I didn't do a water bath and it cracked, but I am okay with that - function over form, taste over appearance. This recipe is a definite keeper.

Pumpkin Marble Cheesecake

Servings 10

1 cup graham cracker crumbs
1/4 cup butter melted
2 (8-ounce) packages cream cheese
3/4 cup sugar divided
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 eggs
1 cup fresh pumpkin pureed
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg


Preheat oven to 350.

Spray 9" spring-form pan with cooking spray. Combine the crushed graham crackers and melted butter. Press into the bottom and up sides of the pan. Bake for 8-10 minutes. Allow to cool.

Combine cream cheese, 1/2 cup of sugar, and vanilla. Cream until smooth and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Reserve 1 cup of the batter, refrigerate covered. To the remaining batter, add the remaining sugar, the pumpkin and spices. Mix until blended.

Remove the plain batter from the refrigerator and spoon about half onto the crust in dollops. Cover with the pumpkin batter and then dollop the remaining plain batter on top. Using a butter knife, gently swirl the batters together.

Bake for 50-60 minutes. Allow to cool on wire rack in pan. Refrigerate for a couple of hours before serving.

Disclaimer

Pumpkin Sherbert

I am a big fan of pumpkin. In the fall, I make a variety of dishes using pumpkin (most of them desserts and snacks). I like to use the whole pumpkin - seeds and pulp.

The other day, a friend at work forwarded a recipe for Pumpkin Sherbert. I just knew that I had to try it. She had found it at skinnytaste.com, I tweaked it slightly.

2 1/4 c milk
2/3 c sugar
1 c pumpkin (canned or puree)
2 tsp vanilla
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg
pinch of clove
pinch of salt

In a saucepan, combine milk, sugar and pumpkin. Heat over medium heat to a full boil. Reduce heat to low and simmer for a minute.

Remove from heat and add in vanilla and spices.

Allow it to cool and use an ice cream freezer - follow the instructions for your freezer.

I made mine in a bowl. I poured the mixture into a shallow bowl and placed it in the freezer. Every hour or two, I came back and stirred the mixture. It took about 8 hours to freeze to a sherbert consistency. This approach makes a more grainy sherbert, because of the way you disrupt the crystal structure at longer intervals and over more time, compared to the constant disruption in an ice cream freezer.