Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies
These pumpkin chocolate chip cookies combine baked pumpkin with comforting autumn spices and dark chocolate.
Being British, I haven’t really tried many desserts made with pumpkin, but because Halloween is just around the corner I wanted to make some cookies for our friends’ children. Crispy with a chewy centre flavoured with pumpkin, cinnamon, ginger and chocolate, the results where a success and the kids – as well as the adults 😉 – loved them.
I am not a big fan of cakey cookies, I prefer ones that are crunchy and chewy. To achieve a cookie that is crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside, it’s important to keep the moisture level low. I decided to start with my eggless classic cookie recipe and adapt it ever so slightly. Because this recipe doesn’t contain eggs and has a low sugar level it doesn’t have as much moisture as other cookie recipes. What is going to change this is the addition of the pumpkin, so it’s important to try and dry out the puree as much as possible prior to adding it to the dough.
Chilling the dough for as long as possible will also help in aiding the flour to absorb some of the moisture, but if you can’t wait you can bake them straight away and if you want to achieve a slightly chewier cookie, underbaking them is the trick!
For those who love raw cookie dough this is a great recipe as it doesn’t contain eggs!
If you love these then you’re going to love my double chocolate cookie or giant flat chocolate chunk cookies recipe. It’s choosing which one to bake next time that’s going to be difficult. I guess another round of taste testing is required 🙂
If you decide to give this recipe a try, let me know! Leave a comment below and rate it – it’s really helpful to me and other readers knowing what you think! And don’t forget to take a picture and tag me @thegourmetlarder or hashtag it #thegourmetlarder on Instagram or Facebook. I love seeing what you’ve been baking! 🙂
RECIPE HIGHLIGHTS
- EASE: easy.
- FREE FROM: check out my substitutions section for vegan, gluten and sugar-free options.
- GREAT FOR: everyday baking, treats, picnics, friends and family visiting, they also make nice homemade gifts!
- TASTE & TEXTURE: crisp around the edges, chewy and full of chocolate on the inside.
- SERVING: great on their own or with a glass of milk.
- QUANTITIY: depending on the size of your cookies, this recipe will make 12-24 cookies.
- TIME: 1 hour 7 minutes, (includes an optional 30 minutes chilling)
© THE GOURMET LARDER. All images and content are copyright protected. If you want to share this recipe, please do so using the share buttons provided. Please do not republish the recipe or its content in full instead, include a link to this post for the recipe. Further information can be found in my FAQ’s.
INGREDIENTS
For this pumpkin chocolate chip cookie recipe all you need are these ingredients:
- Butter – gives us a crisp texture and a rich buttery flavour. Make sure it is at room temperature when you start.
- Brown sugar – creates that extra crispiness in the cookies.
- Caster or granulated white sugar – adds structure, sweetness and creates the soft centre.
- Golden syrup or corn syrup or honey – is an invert sugar which, creates a texture that’s flexible and chewy, as opposed to crisp.
- Pure vanilla extract or paste – adds flavour and enhances the other ingredient flavours in the recipe.
– Vanilla recommendations: pure vanilla extract or vanilla paste or vanilla pods.
- Pumpkin puree – our hero flavour. You can bake or cook the pumpkin in a pan of boiling water, alternatively use canned pumpkin puree that is 100% pure pumpkin. Don’t use pumpkin pie filling (which has added sugar and spices).
- Plain or all-purpose flour – builds structure and crumb.
- Bicarbonate of soda or baking soda – is a chemical leavening which works both prior and during baking. It becomes activated when it’s combined with both an acidic ingredient or liquid, which increases the volume of the ingredients, creating a nice light texture.
- Dark chocolate chips or chunks – the more the merrier.
Chocolate recommendations: bars – Lindt Excellence dark 70% bar 100g, Montezuma’s darkside 51% bar 90g, Menier dark cooking chocolate 100g, Green and Black’s Organic dark Chocolate 100g, 1kg bags – Callebaut dark chocolate, Callebaut milk chocolate, Callebaut white chocolate.
- Salt – I highly recommend adding a good pinch of fine salt to your biscuit doughs. It might seem a bit weird, but it actually has the incredible ability to enhance sweetness, suppress bitterness, and elevate the flavour of all the ingredients, making your biscuits taste even better. It’s pretty crazy, the sodium in the salt sends signals to move glucose into your tongue’s sweet taste receptors, making the sweetness really pop. So, don’t be afraid to sprinkle a little salt – it’ll take your biscuits to the next level!
I recommend Maldon Sea salt flakes or Cornish sea salt, but any good quality sea salt is fine.
SUBSTITUTIONS
While I am making recommendations for alternative ingredients, I haven’t necessarily tried them. If you try making any adaptions, I would love to know how you get on and share it with the other readers.
VEGAN OPTIONS
- Butter: I recommend Naturli vegan block or Flora plant-based block butter alternative.
- Dairy-free milk: replace the milk with non-dairy milks such as almond, oat, rice or soy milk.
- Chocolate: There are now quite a few brands making vegan chocolate to choose from, such as these bars – Lindt classic milk chocolate, Ombar 55% coco mylk, Ombar 72% dark chocolate, Happi plain oat milk, Happi white chocolate, Montezuma’s Fitzroy 74% dark cocoa.
GLUTEN-FREE OPTION
- Flour: replace the gluten flour with a 1:1 alternative gluten free flour, such as Doves Farm Free plain gluten free flour. If possible, choose a flour which contains xanthan gum or alternatively, add 1 tsp to your batter for stability. You can also try Doves Farm gluten free self-raising flour.
WHAT VARIATIONS CAN I MAKE?
- Chocolates: try swapping out the dark chocolate for milk or white chocolate and you don’t have to use chocolate chips, chopped chocolate works just as well. You can also use a mixture!
- Nuts: you can choose to keep the chocolate or not and add 100g coarsely chopped pecans, pistachios, almonds, walnuts or even pumpkin seeds.
- Alternatively try different mix-ins: dried fruits such as cranberries or raisins would also work great in this recipe.
If you experiment, I would love to know how you get on and share it with the other readers.
NUTRITION
Serving: one pumpkin chocolate chip cookie
Nutrition information can vary for a recipe based on factors such as precision of measurements, brands, ingredient freshness, or the source of nutrition data.
I strive to keep the information as accurate as possible but make no warranties regarding its accuracy.
I encourage you to make your own calculations based on the actual ingredients used in your recipe, using your preferred nutrition calculator.
Nutrition per serving
| Calories | 249.5 kcal (12%) |
| Total Fat | 11.5 g (16%) |
| Carbs | 34.9 g (13%) |
| Sugars | 20.7 g (23%) |
| Protein | 2.3 g (5%) |
STORAGE AND FREEZING
Store the cooled cookies in an airtight container for 5-7 days at room temperature.
Freezing the cookie dough – freeze the scoped dough on the baking tray or a plate that fits in your freezer (lined with baking paper). Once they have frozen solid, approx. 30 minutes, transfer them to a freezer-safe, airtight container. They will last up to 3 months in the freezer.
Freezing the baked cookies – cool the biscuits completely after baking and place them in a freezer bag or airtight container. They will last up to 1 month. When you are ready to serve, allow the cookies to reach room temperature.
© THE GOURMET LARDER. All images and content are copyright protected. If you want to share this recipe, please do so using the share buttons provided. Please do not republish the recipe or its content in full instead, include a link to this post for the recipe. Further information can be found in my FAQ’s.
TOOLS YOU’LL NEED
Here is some kitchen equipment that I use and recommend for this pumpkin chocolate chip cookie recipe.
These three different size scoops are perfect for ice cream, melons and cookies.
Please check out my Shop for a curated collection of some of my favourite baking equipment. The Gourmet Larder is an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
TIP: I highly recommend using metric measurements and a digital kitchen scale, rather than cup measurements. If you have ever ended up with dry, dense or crumbly baked goods, it might be because of inaccurate volume measurements, not all measuring cups are made equally. All my recipes on this blog are carefully developed so that you can easily recreate them in your own kitchen with success, using metric measurements. It is also a lot easier, less messy and you will get far better, consistent results. 🙂
If you are interested in understanding conversions, here you will find the best conversion chart.
RECIPE TIPS
- Use room temperature butter – cold butter will not cream together properly with the sugars.
- The dough should be a little sticky – don’t try to add more flour to eliminate the stickiness.
- Resting and chilling the cookie dough – if you want to get the best results, placing the dough in the fridge prior to baking, allows the dry ingredients to absorb the moisture from the wet ingredients. This is especially important as the cooked pumpkin still contains a lot of moisture, which we want to eliminate as much as possible. This process will also create more flavour in the dough and because the fats are also chilled it prevents the cookies from spreading out too quickly during baking.
- How long should I chill the dough? – patience isn’t really my strong suit, so I totally understand if you can’t wait! If this is the case, you can bake off a few cookies immediately and then place the rest to chill in the fridge. If you’re not in a hurry, try to leave the dough to rest overnight or at least try to chill your dough for 30 minutes. It’ll be worth it!
- Oven temperature – make sure your oven has reached the required temperature before placing the tray of cookies inside.
Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies
INGREDIENTS LIST
Pumpkin puree
- 1 small Pumpkin such as Hokkaido (or butternut squash)
Cookie dough
- 100 g butter (at room temperature)
- 140 g light brown sugar
- 60 g caster sugar
- 2 tsp honey (or golden syrup or corn syrup)
- 100 g pumpkin puree
- 1 tsp pure vanilla extract or 1/2 tsp of vanilla paste
- ¼ tsp bicarbonate of soda / baking soda
- ¼ tsp fine sea salt
- 1½ tsp cinnamon powder
- ½ tsp ground ginger
- 190 g plain flour (all-purpose (BL55))
- 100 g dark chocolate (whole bar chopped or chips)
Preparation
- Pumpkin puree: wash and peel the pumpkin, then dice it into roughly 1cm squares. Place them in a saucepan with enough water to cover them and cook for 12 minutes until soft and a piece can be crushed easily with a fork.Drain off the water using a colander and place the pumpkin back into the pan avoiding adding any extra water. Gently dry fry the pumpkin for 5 minutes to remove as much of the moisture as possible. Be careful not to let it burn. Leave to cool, then puree, using a fork or a small hand blender until creamy.Alternatively, cut the pumpkin into 6 cm pieces and place in a hot oven for 30 minutes at 190°C / 170°C fan / 375°F / Gas 5. Once baked use a fork or place them in a blender to puree it.
- Cookie dough: in a medium sized bowl, cream the butter, and the sugar together until light and fluffy. Approx. 3-4 minutes. Add the vanilla, honey and the pumpkin puree and mix to incorporate.
- Sift the flour, salt, spices and baking soda into the bowl and mix together until the crumbs just start to come together, then add your choice of chopped chocolate or chips and mix in gently.
- Optional: for best results, I like to place the raw cookie balls in the fridge prior to baking for at least 30 minutes or overnight if possible. This allows the dry ingredients to absorb the moisture from the wet ingredients more, especially as we have added pumpkin puree which is moist.
- Shaping: using a 6 cm/3 tbsp ice cream scoop or a spoon, scoop out 12 balls of cookie dough onto a plate or tray lined with a piece of baking paper, that will fit in your fridge. If you want to have smaller cookies, divide the balls in half to get double the quantity or you can use a 4 cm/1 tbsp scoop. Optionally, you can add some more chocolate pieces to the top of each cookie for that bakery-style look.Freezing the dough: at this stage, the dough can also be frozen for baking another day.
- Preheat the oven to 190°C / 170°C fan / 375°F / Gas 5.
- Remove the balls of cookie dough from the fridge and place them on a baking tray lined with baking/parchment paper. Leaving 5 cm/2" space between to allow for spreading. I like to push down on the balls to flatten a little into a puck shape so they can spread more easily. I usually fit 6 pieces per baking tray and bake in two batches.
- Baking: bake for 12-14 minutes, until browned around the edges. For half size cookies bake for 8-10 minutes.
- Remove from the oven and let rest on the baking tray for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool. If your cookies have puffed up too much, you can use the back of a spoon or the flat spatula to gently press down on them.
- Getting perfectly round uniform cookies: after removing the cookies from the oven and while they are still hot, simply use a large cookie cutter over the top of a cookie, using a circular motion to give the cookie a rounder shape.
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