White Chocolate Pumpkin Spice Cookies

You know those recipes that you make once and know immediately that you're going to love them forever and ever? This is one of those recipes. I love pumpkin, I love white chocolate, and I love cookies. What's not to love about the recipe? They even last for a couple of weeks (assuming you don't eat them all immediately) when kept in a plastic container, and they freeze well!

Here's where I admit this isn't my recipe. It comes from Recipezazz.com. I have made a couple of changes to it, however... I make the cookies a lot smaller than it calls for and I always double the batch, so I usually end up with about 85 cookies instead of the 24 it says it makes.

As I said, I double the batch. It makes it so I don't have a partial bag of white chocolate chips left, which is good because I would totally sit down and eat them while reading a book. I'm like that. Anyway... pumpkin, flour, baking soda, brown sugar, butter, eggs, vanilla, pumpkin pie spice (I make my own), white chocolate chips and pecans. Easy ingredients to find on sale during the holidays, also!

First, you combine the dry ingredients. The first time I made these I thought it said "sift" instead of "stir", so that's how I've always done it. I have no idea if it makes a difference in the finished product or not, but I sift.

Then you cream the butter and brown sugar together using an electric mixer. You can do it by hand, of course, but it's infinitely faster with a mixer. Also, that's what the recipe says to do and as we all know I would never tweak a recipe! Or something...

After the butter and sugar are well creamed, beat in the pumpkin, eggs, and vanilla. It'll be pretty soupy, but that's OK... you still have that bowl of sifted dry ingredients sitting there that wants to be mixed in. I usually add the dry ingredients in 3-4 batches, and usually after the second one I can no longer use the mixer so I get out a spoon.

What you'll end up with still looks like it might be too soupy to make cookies, but it's not. Especially if you're using the pecans, which absurdly are listed as optional. Unless you're dealing with a nut allergy, use them. They add something special.

After you get the white chocolate chips and pecans mixed in, it starts looking a lot more like cookie dough. It's still not as firm as, say, regular chocolate chip cookie dough, but it's plenty enough. These are a very moist cookie, so the dough is naturally going to be less stiff.

Onto the cookie sheet(s) they go, no greasing or parchment paper necessary. This is my giant baking sheet so I can fit 20 on it, but if you're using a standard size then you should stick to 12. They spread, but not too badly, and I don't think I've ever had any spread so much I had to separate them when they came out of the oven.

See? Perfect! If you're making the larger cookies it calls for, you should bake for 20-22 minutes. Since I make them smaller I usually only do 15 or so minutes and it seems to work just fine. I usually leave them on the cookie sheet for a couple of minutes before transferring them to racks, and it helps them stay together better. As I said, they're very moist cookies, but boy are they amazing!

White Chocolate Pumpkin Spice Cookies

Makes 24

2 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup unsalted butter
1 1/2 cups brown sugar, packed
1 cup solid pack pumpkin
2 eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 cup white chocolate chips
1 cup pecans, chopped (optional)

Serving Size: 1 (43.4 g)

Calories 173.7

Total Fat - 6.7 g

Saturated Fat - 1.5 g

Cholesterol - 13.6 mg

Sodium - 44.2 mg

Total Carbohydrate - 26.2 g

Dietary Fiber - 0.8 g

Sugars - 6.4 g

Protein - 3.1 g

Again, not my recipe. This comes from Recipezazz.com courtesy of "Cookiemama".