Pumpkin Chocolate Chip and Nut Cookies

Recipe:

Ingredient Notes:

• Pumpkin purée. To make it, grind cooked pumpkin in a blender. There are three ways to cook the pumpkin: bake, boil, or microwave. I usually bake it so that the purée has a more concentrated pumpkin flavor and less excess moisture.
• Butter. In this case, it is better to use unsalted butter with at least 80% fat.
• Sugar. The recipe uses two types of sugar: regular white and brown. You can use only brown sugar, replacing the white sugar at a 1:1 ratio. The cookies will be more flavorful with it. If you have muscovado sugar, substitute some of the regular brown sugar with it; the cookies will be much more flavorful.
  Regular white granulated sugar, without any brown sugar, will also work fine.
• Flour. For cookies, it’s best to use flour with a low protein content, such as regular all-purpose or cake flour. Strong bread flour is not suitable here.
• Eggs. The recipe uses only the yolk, but when kneading the dough for a double batch, you can replace it with one small whole egg, one-to-one by weight. For reference, one medium yolk weighs about 20 grams.
• Starch. You can use corn starch or potato starch. In this case, the substitution is 1:1.
• Spices. Ginger and cinnamon are classic spices for pumpkin baking. If you have a ready-made pumpkin pie spice mix, you can use that instead of cinnamon and ginger.
• Mix-ins. My favorite option is bittersweet chocolate and walnuts. Alternatively, you can use hazelnuts, cashews, pecans, or peanuts if you like them in cookies. You can replace bittersweet chocolate with milk or white chocolate. You can also add dried cranberries or cherries.

Let’s start cooking!

Melt the butter and let it sit for 5 minutes.

In a bowl, mix together the two types of sugar.

Add the warm butter, pumpkin purée, egg yolk, and spices to the bowl. Stir. The warm butter helps the sugar dissolve during the kneading process, which improves the texture of the finished cookies.

Gradually add the flour, which has been sifted with starch, baking powder, and baking soda, and knead the dough. The dough should not be too stiff; initially, it may feel too soft for shaping into balls. Add the chopped chocolate and nuts.

Stir.

Take 2 tablespoons of dough at a time (it is more convenient for me to use an ice cream scoop), form balls, and arrange them on a lined baking tray.

It is important to leave enough space between the balls because they will spread when baking. If there is not enough space, the cookies will stick together. A standard (30×40 cm) baking tray can comfortably hold 12 cookies.

Place the cookies in a preheated to 180°C (355°F) oven and bake for 10 minutes, until the edges are lightly golden brown. The centers will be soft.

Remove the tray from the oven and let the cookies cool on the tray for about 5-7 minutes. They will set – that’s normal. Then, carefully remove the cookies from the tray with a spatula and transfer them to a rack to cool.

Serve.

Enjoy!

This Pumpkin Chocolate Chip and Nut Cookies recipe was checked, prepared and approved by Chef Tatyana Nazaruk - author of FlavorIt.com.
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