Pumpkin Spice Snickerdoodle Cookies

If I can be completely honest, I’ve never tasted pumpkin spice flavored anything.

Well, unless you count pumpkin pie. 

I’m sure it’s surprising given the avalanche of pumpkin spiced products in grocery stores at the hint of a cool breeze.

I’ve tasted a lot of spiced adjacent things like chai, gingerbread, carrot cake etc. so I figured the pumpkin spice blend’s taste was similar–a mix and match of similar spices. When developing this recipe imagine my surprise when I discovered that pumpkin spice is a combination of spices I commonly keep in my pantry: cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, all spice and/or clove.

This of course excludes the star of the show: pumpkin, but incorporating canned pumpkin is a much easier task than blending the elusive spices. 

With Fall creeping around the corner, I thought there’s no better way to ring in sweater weather than taking the classic snickerdoodle cookie and putting a pumpkin spiced spin on it.

Baker’s Note: Cream of Tartar

Cream of tartar is a dry white powder that you can find in the baking aisle near the spices. It’s an acidic by-product of fermenting grapes into wine (The scientific name: potassium bitartrate). It’s commonly used to stabilize egg whites and suspends air bubbles and gives you stiff peaks in meringues or fluffy cakes (like sponge or angle food cakes). When mixed with baking soda it becomes a leavening agent (allrecipes.com, Vanessa Greaves).

Cream of tartar gives cookies a fluffiness, chewiness and a slight tang: A signature attribute in snickerdoodle cookies.

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Pumpkin Spice Snickerdoodles

Yield: 9

Author: Alicia Maxey

Prep time: 5 MinCook time: 12 MinInactive time: 10 MinTotal time: 27 Min

These pumpkin spice snickerdoodle cookies are a fall flavor bomb. They are just as fluffy and soft as the classic cookies with a subtle nod to the beloved pumpkin spice blend.

Ingredients

Cookie Dough

• 1 ⅔ cups (160g) all purpose flour
• ¼ tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp cream of tartar
• ½ cup (100g) white granulated sugar
• ¼ cup (50g) light brown sugar
• ¼ cup (57g) unsalted butter, softened
• ¼ cup (60g) pumpkin puree*
• 1 large egg, room temperature
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• ½ tbsp ground cinnamon

Pumpkin Spice Coating

• 2 Tbsp white granulated sugar
• ½ tbsp ground cinnamon
• 1 tsp ground nutmeg
• ½ tsp ground cloves
• ¼ tsp ground ginger

Instructions

1. Place the oven rack in the middle of the oven. Preheat to 350°F.
2. In a small mixing bowl mix together the granulated sugar, ground cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and ground ginger. Set aside.
3. In a medium mixing bowl whisk together flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, and ground cinnamon. Set aside.
4. In a large mixing bowl cream together butter and sugar until fluffy.
5. Add in the egg, vanilla extract, pumpkin puree, and mix until well combined.
6. Fold in the dry ingredients until there are no more flour bits at the bottom of the bowl. Cookie dough will be very sticky*
7. Scoop out balls of dough and carefully coat the dough in the the pumpkin spiced blend.
8. Place on a parchment lined baking sheet and bake cookies for 11-12 minutes, rotating half way through. The cookies will come out slightly puffy and soft, but as they cool the cookies will deflate, and set.
9. Let cookies rest on a baking sheet for 5 minutes before moving to a wire rack to completely cool.

Notes

1. I used Libby's 100% Pure Canned Pumpkin Puree
2. You can refrigerate the cookie dough for about an hour (or even overnight) if you feel it’s too messy. Unfortunately the dough will still be somewhat soft, but maybe more manageable this way. 

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Cookies can be kept room temperature in an airtight container for up to five days.