High Altitude Soft and Chewy Pumpkin Cookies
An easy, no chill recipe for the softest pumpkin cookies that are chewy, not cakey, full of warm spices and sprinkled with sugar.
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
- Electric Mixer (Stand or Hand-Held)
- Medium Cookie Scoop with Release Lever (1 1/2 tbsp capacity)
- Baking Sheet + Parchment Paper
- Paper Towels, for blotting the pumpkin dry
Ingredients
- ½ cup canned pumpkin (not pumpkin pie filling)
- ¾ cup (12 tbsp) unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
- 1 cup light brown sugar, lightly packed
- 2 large egg yolks (save the whites for another use)
- 1 tbsp vanilla extract
- 1 ¾ cups all-purpose flour, fluffed, spooned and leveled
- ¾ tsp baking soda
- ½ tsp coarse Kosher salt (if using table salt, use half the amount)
- ½ tsp ground cinnamon
- ½ tsp ground allspice
- ½ tsp ground ginger
- ¼ tsp ground nutmeg
- ¼ tsp ground cloves
- ¼ cup granulated sugar, for rolling the cookie dough balls
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350 F, and position a rack in the center of the oven. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
- 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 the bowl of your stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment (or using a hand held electric mixer), beat the softened butter with the brown sugar for 2 minutes on medium speed, until fluffy.
- Add the dried pumpkin, egg yolks and vanilla, and mix on low until combined.
- In a separate bowl, combine the flour with the baking soda, salt and spices. Add the dry ingredients to the dough and mix on low just until combined. The dough will be fairly soft.
- Use a medium cookie scoop with a release lever (approximately 1 1/2 tbsp capacity) to scoop 2 dozen balls of dough. Roll the balls smooth between your hands, then coat the dough balls in the granulated sugar.
- Place the cookies 2-3 inches apart on your baking sheet (I baked 12 cookies at a time on a standard rimmed cookie sheet) and flatten the balls slightly with the palm of your hand. Bake for 9-10 minutes, until the cookies have spread and slightly puffed, with the edges set. Cool on the baking sheet for 1 minute, then transfer to a cooling rack to cool completely.Baker's Note: You may or may not need to flatten your cookies to encourage spreading. I recommend baking 1-2 cookies first, as a test batch, one slightly flattened and one not flattened, to determine what works best for your altitude. I found that my cookies didn't spread quite enough unless I flattened the dough balls a little before baking.
- Let the cookies cool completely, then store in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 5 days, or in the freezer for up to 3-6 months.
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