IT'S FALL Part 2

IT'S FALL, EVERYONE! Not today, because it's going to get up to 87 degrees F, but this weekend it was storming and almost chilly, so I had to feverishly make two pumpkin cookie recipes that had been haunting my dreams.

Pumpkin Cookie Weekend Part 2:

What recipe: Pumpkin Snickerdoodles
What I changed: Nothing, however the blogger I got this recipe from added 1/4 cup of pumpkin to the original recipe. Don't do this! It makes the dough a bit too wet, and it doesn't increase the pumpkin taste factor, unfortunately. I also only put a LITTLE ground ginger in the sugar coating - ground ginger can be overpowering, which terrifies me.
     Future things to try: BFF and I were wondering if we added in some pumpkin syrup (i.e. the stuff they put in your pumpkin spice lattes) would work to make these cookies more pumpkin-y. Also, I'm wondering since we're adding pumpkin if we need quite so much butter... but that's for the next evolution of these cookies. Feel free to experiment, and let me know what you find out!

Ingredients:
Cookies:
- 3.75 cups all-purpose flour
- 1.5 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1/4 tsp nutmeg
- 2 sticks unsalted butter, softened
- 1 cup granulated white sugar
- 1/2 cup brown sugar, lightly packed
- 1 cup pumpkin puree (canned or homemade)
- 1 large egg
- 2 tsp vanilla extract

Sugary coating (what makes snickerdoodles snickerdoodles):
- 1/2 cup granulated white sugar
- 1 tsp ground cinnamon
Dash of ground ginger
Dash of all spice

STEP 1: 
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Whisk together all the dry cookie ingredients and set them aside.

I measure my flour - all-purpose flour is 4.75 oz per cup.

STEP 2: 
In a large bowl cream together the butter and sugars until they look marvelously creamy and fluffy. Add in the pumpkin puree. Once that's mixed in, add in the egg and vanilla.

STEP 3:
Add in the dry ingredients to your butter/pumpkin mixture. I would highly recommend using a hand mixer for this, as the batter can get pretty thick. Again, as in our other cookie recipes, add in the dry ingredients 1/3 at a time until completely mixed in.

STEP 4:
Cover the dough with plastic wrap, foil, whatever and refrigerate the dough for at least 1 hour. UGHHHH. Waiting. I know. But you gotta do this otherwise the snickerdoodles won't be as snickerdoodle-y (this means dense, haha).

STEP 5: 
10 minutes before your hour of refrigerating the dough is done, preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Line your baking sheet(s) with parchment paper.

In a small bowl mix your sugar coating ingredients together.

STEP 6:
Here's the fun part! Especially if you have someone you can do this with: best friend, significant other, bratty child, irritating parent, etc. One of you rolls the snickerdoodles into 1-2 Tablespoon sized balls, then you pass them to your partner in crime and then coat them with the sugary mixture. After your PIC does that, they will flatten the balls with the underside of a glass (which has been dipped in sugar).

Covering the snickerdoodle dough balls in sugar mixture.

Flattening the snickerdoodle dough with the bottom of a sugar covered glass (get the sugar to stick by dipping the bottom of the glass in water)

Once flattened, sprinkle more of the sugar mixture on top.

STEP 7:
After you and your PIC have rocketed through Step 6, sprinkle the tops of all your snickerdoodles with a bit more of the sugar mixture, and pop them in the oven for 12-15 minutes!

Great! Snickerdoodles done! However, they aren't very pumpkin-y, as I said above. Kind of disappointing, but still good in their own right. 

Bake on!