These pumpkin spice cookies are one of six pumpkin dessert recipes I have on my site. It seems we use pumpkin quite a bit in our Italian Dessert Recipes. And in our family we didn't limit pumpkin to just the holiday season.
Last week we were OVER committed on our entertaining-work-errand-make-everything-happen-schedule and my overly optimistic husband booked a "card night" with friends on the very night his flight would "be back in time to help with dinner." Yeah. Right. God love him. I'm generally expected to cook up some fancy pants dessert. Nobody says I have to. But it's just kinda expected. And my son wanted me to bake my best oatmeal cookies recipe. For company? Uh. No. I was wanting to try and put together this pumpkin spice cookies idea I had in the back of my mind....
Fortunately our friends are NOT high maintenance-fake-fingernail-shave-your-poodle-butt-type. And I could get by with any of my basic Italian cookie recipes, but I was stuck on trying these pumkin spice cookies on my family, so our friends were going to be at the grand tasting.
I modified one of my grandma's friend's recipes. My grandma had typed (yes, typed because she is older and now passed) a basic spice cookie recipe that one of her lady friends had shared with her. I wanted pumpkin. So I morphed her friend's recipe into these pumpkin spice cookies. I love 'em! The butter rum icing is a must in my book. But nobody is saying you HAVE to use it. It's an option. To make it "spice" and still taste pumpkin-y I wouldn't omit too many of the spices if you don't have them. The more you omit, the more bland. And you want these to taste pumpkin pie-ish, but in a cookie bite.
These will definitely be a do-over in our household.
Thanks for stopping by -
* 1 cup of shortening (I know, it's not butter, but see why below)
* 1 cup of sugar
* 1 cup of canned pureed pumpkin (see other things you can do with the leftovers on my pumpkin dessert recipes page)
* 1 egg
* 1 tsp of vanilla extract
* 2 cups of flour
* 1 teaspoon baking powder
* 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
* 1/2 teaspoon salt
* 1 teaspoon cinnamon
* 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
* 1/2 teaspoon cloves
* 1/8 teaspoon ginger
* 1/8 teaspoon anise (you can leave this out - it's just an Italian thing I add)
* 3/4 cup of raisins
* 2 cups of sugar
* 2 tablespoons of butter
* 1 teaspoon of vanilla
* 1-2 tablespoons of rum
* Preheat oven to 350
* Cream butter and sugar until they are fluffy
* Add the pumpkin, egg and vanilla - mix 'er up
* Next, combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt , cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and anise
* Stir into the shortening sugar mixture
* Add the raisins
* Drop onto a very lightly greased cookie sheet (I always use a Silpat)
* Bake about 15 minutes
* Once they cool, put on a rack
* Put the butter in a saucepan on medium heat
* I keep an eye on it until it browns - I want a hint of "brown" and the flavor of browned butter
* Remove from the heat
* Add the sugar - stir out the lumps
* Add the vanilla and rum
* Make sure your cookies have cooled some before you frost
* Sometimes I dip the tops in the frosting, other times I drizzle with a spoon
* Give your self at least for baking and enough of a cool off for the frosting to not tear up the cookie
I stuck with my grandma's friend's recipe and used the shortening. And I'm NOT a big shortening fan. I had to go to the store to get some. I rarely use it. Here's what I liked about it. It gave these pumpkin spice cookies more of a cake type texture. And since it was the main dessert at our dinner party I wanted that feel of "cake", but in a small bite. You can mix half butter half shortening and I'm sure it would be great - but it won't be cake like.
It's a mat that lays UNDER your cookies ON TOP of your cookie sheet. The heat spreads evenly through the mat. There is no mess to scrape and scrub off afterwards, and the cookies come out so evenly baked! This works with any of your drop cookie recipes and shaped cookies. (Don't use it on bar cookies!)
Remember the whole goal is to make pumpkin "spice" cookies. So - you want to have that pumpkin flavor and the spices that make that. The two you could skip would be the ginger and the anise. But I'd definitely keep the cloves, nutmeg, and cinnamon.
Back to the top of the pumpkin spice cookies .
