High Altitude Pumpkin Sugar Cookies with Maple Icing
These soft and buttery, pumpkin-shaped sugar cookies are frosted with maple buttercream icing for a cute and delicious fall cookie.
All recipes on Curly Girl Kitchen are developed for high altitude at 5,280 feet. See FAQs for adjusting to higher or lower elevations.
Equipment
- Food Processor
- Electric Mixer (Stand or Hand-Held)
Ingredients
Cookies
- ½ cup canned pumpkin puree (not pumpkin pie filling)
- 2 ¼ cups all-purpose flour, fluffed, spooned and leveled
- ¾ cup powdered sugar
- ¼ tsp coarse Kosher salt (if using table salt, use half the amount)
- ½ tsp ground cinnamon
- ½ tsp ground ginger
- ¼ tsp ground cloves
- ¼ tsp ground allspice
- ⅛ tsp ground nutmeg
- ¾ cup cold unsalted butter, cut into 12 pieces
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 tbsp milk
Frosting
- ½ cup unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
- 1 cup powdered sugar
- 1 tsp meringue powder, optional
- ⅛ tsp ground cinnamon
- ⅛ tsp ground nutmeg
- 1 small pinch salt
- ½ tsp maple extract
- ½ tsp vanilla extract
- 1 tbsp milk or cream, if needed
Instructions
Make the Cookie Dough
- On a plate, blot the pumpkin dry with paper towels. You may need to change the paper towels 6-7 times to remove enough moisture from the pumpkin. When the pumpkin is dry enough, barely any moisture should transfer to the paper towels, and the pumpkin will be reduced from 1/2 cup to 1/4 cup.
- In a food processor, pulse the flour, powdered sugar, salt and spices to combine. With the food processor running, drop the butter pieces in one at a time, pulsing until evenly dispersed.
- Add the vanilla, milk and the dried pumpkin puree, then process the dough until it comes together into a ball.
- Dump the dough out, knead in any excess bits of flour, and wrap the dough in plastic wrap. Refrigerate for 30 minutes.
Cut the Cookies
- Line several baking sheets with parchment paper.
- Flour a clean work surface, and flour the dough lightly as well. Roll the dough out evenly to between 1/4-1/8 inch thick. Cut as many cookies as you can, and set the cut cookies on a parchment lined baking sheet, spacing them 2 inches apart. Gather up the scraps of dough, re-roll the dough, and continue cutting cookies. Using a 3-inch pumpkin shaped cutter, you should be able to cut around 27 cookies.
- Refrigerate the cut cookies for 30 minutes. Chilling the cut cookies helps to keep the cookies from spreading while they bake, so they maintain their shape.
Bake the Cookies
- Preheat the oven to 350 F, and position a rack in the center of the oven.
- Bake the chilled cookies for about 12 minutes. The baked cookies will not spread, but should have tiny flaky layers around the edges, and if you gently turn one over, there should be no appearance of raw or wet dough on the bottom. If steam inside the dough has caused any of the cookies to slightly puff up, just gently press it flat again with the back of a spatula.
- Cool the cookies on the baking sheet for several minutes, and then carefully transfer to a wire rack to cool completely before decorating.
Decorate with Buttercream
- With an electric mixer, beat the butter for 1 minute until smooth.
- Add the powdered sugar, meringue powder, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt. Add the extracts. Beat for 4-5 minutes until very light and fluffy, scraping the bowl occasionally. Only add the milk if needed for desired consistency.
- To decorate your pumpkin cookies, you'll only need a small offset icing spatula with a tapered tip. You can spread the frosting on as thick or as thin as you like. I spread on a fairly thin layer, then dragged the tip of the spatula through the icing to create the curved grooves of the pumpkin.
- If you like, fit a piping bag with a coupler, and use tip #352 to pipe small leaves and tip #2 to pipe curly vines.
Notes
- These cookies freeze beautifully, so you can bake them in advance and then freeze until you're ready to decorate them.
- You can also make the dough in advance, wrap it well, and freeze for 3-6 months. Thaw it overnight in the refrigerator, then let it warm up at room temperature until you can roll it out.
- Note that the icing on these cookies is buttercream, not royal icing. It won't dry and harden like royal icing, but the the surface of the buttercream will dry a bit and crust over, while staying soft underneath. You cannot stack the frosted cookies without ruining the icing.
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