Spiced Pumpkin Chocolate Chunk Cookies

This one’s gonna be a quickie. This pumpkin chocolate chunk cookie is the result of too much time on Pinterest. It happens to the best of us. The entire landscape over there is all apples and pears and toffee and caramel and pumpkin in more forms than you can possible imagine. Pumpkin fritters, pumpkin muffins, pumpkin cookies, pumpkin pancakes, donuts, waffles…you name it, we’re shoving pumpkin in it. Never mind the fact that it’s still warm out and I’ve yet to see a single brown leaf blowing down the street.

As I sat in my tank top and bare feet, the curtains billowing in a warm breeze, I scrolled through pumpkin in it’s many forms and I realized I could sit there no longer and do nothing. It just felt wrong. Much like those girls in the 60s that couldn’t dance at the Beatles concerts. I wanted to dance. I wanted to tango with brown butter and bread flour, brown sugar and spices. I couldn’t even wait to write the recipe up in a proper Word doc as I’m known to do. I knew I needed my aforementioned partners brown butter and brown sugar…and I also needed other members on my dance card such as cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg. I knew that my one true love, dark chocolate, had to be in chards. Like Edward Scissorhands I was manically cutting and chopping piles of chocolate bars. More than seemed right, but not quite seeming enough. This cookie, she was ready quick. Within the blink of an eye. With my hair disheveled and flour on my cheeks, I shoved one in Stella’s mouth and she said, ‘it tastes like fall!’ Each satisfied face and furiously eaten cookie only fueled me to make more. Piles were forming on cooling racks, some getting zipped in little baggies for school lunches, sheets were going in the oven and some were getting shoved on the top shelf behind the Mason jars only for me. Yep, I was getting greedy. I couldn’t be stopped.

This is not a crispy cookie…nary a crispy area to be found. It’s soft, chewy, toasty, warm and 25 shades of fall. Come and get us cashmere sweaters. We’re calling you. Put the chardonnay and rosè and sauvignon blanc to the back of the fridge. Dust off the pinot and the syrah. That’s right, pour me a double. Let’s talk about carving pumpkins and corn mazes. Kids in costume and trick or treaters running down the street on a chilly night. We’re ready fall. Bring it.

Let’s bake betches.

***This post was done in conjunction with this week’s Weekly Meal Planning | week two post. Go check it out!

Spiced Pumpkin Chocolate Chunk Cookies

3 Dozen-Ish Cookies, depending on your cookie size

INGREDIENTS

• 8 tablespoons (113 g or 4 oz) unsalted butter
• 3/4 cup (165 g) brown sugar, packed
• 3/4 cup (150 g) granulated sugar
• 1/3 cup (67 g) olive oil or sunflower seed oil
• 1/3 cup (81 g)  pure pumpkin puree (don’t get pumpkin pie filling)
• 2 large eggs, room temperature
• 1 tablespoon (13 g) real vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 cups (203 g) all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 cups (203 g) bread flour*
• 2 teaspoons (10 g) baking powder
• 2 teaspoons (4 g) cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon (5 g) baking soda
• 1 teaspoon (6 g) sea salt
• 1/2 teaspoon (1 g) nutmeg
• 1/4 teaspoon (.5 g) cloves
• 1 1/2 cups (255 g) dark chocolate, coarsely chopped or chips
• Sea salt flakes (don’t use regular salt) to sprinkle on the tops (optional)

*You can use 3 cups of all-purpose flour and omit the bread flour completely. Your cookie will lose some height, but that’s fine. It will still be delicious.

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Preheat your oven to 375 degrees F. Make sure you have a rack in the top third of the oven. Cover a baking sheet with a silpat or parchment paper.
2. Put 4 ounces/1 stick of butter in a small sauce pan and melt over medium heat. Once melted, crank up the heat to medium high. Stand by, stirring and watching. This isn’t the time to go and put your dry ingredients together. Watch yer butter. Small golden bits will start to settle on the bottom of the pan. Once this happens, take it off the heat and pour into a medium, heat-safe bowl to cool a bit.
3. Add the brown sugar, granulated sugar, sunflower seed oil, pumpkin puree, eggs and vanilla to the browned butter once it has slightly cooled. Whisk together until thoroughly blended.
4. In another medium bowl, whisk together the bread flour, all-purpose flour, baking powder, cinnamon, baking soda, sea salt, cloves and nutmeg.
5. Add the flour mixture to the brown butter mixture and mix until barely combined. Add in the chocolate chunks and continue to blend until just combined. Smell. It’s divine. Why isn’t this a fragrance?
6. Use roughly two tablespoons of dough and gently futz into a ball. Don’t overwork your dough.**
7. Bake for 11 minutes. They will appear slightly undone, that’s perfect. They will appear puffed and then they will collapse on themselves. Yes, all the hallmarks of a Displacedhousewife cookie. This is what gives them their character wrinkles. Love that.
8. Let the pumpkin chocolate chunk cookies cool for about five minutes on the baking sheet and then transfer to the cooling rack. Sprinkle with sea salt flakes if you’re feeling it. Now eat one. They’re amazing, right? I’m in love.

**Normally, at this point in the instructions, I would have you put the dough in the fridge for a spell. Likewise there is zero freezer time for the dough balls prior to baking. This dough doesn’t need either of those steps to maintain its gorgeous shape. Yay…quicker cookies! 

On My Mind

• This post was done in conjunction with this week’s Weekly Meal Planning | week two post. Go check it!
• MORE COOKIE RECIPES: Chocolate Marshmallow Sea Salt Cookies, Dark Chocolate + Tart Cherry Cookies, Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies, Chai Spiced Oatmeal Granola Cookies, Brown Butter Muscovado Snickerdoodles, The Best Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Cookie Ever, Loaded Aloha Cookies, Smoked Salt Double Chocolate Rye Cookies, Double Chocolate Peppermint Bark Cookies, Bomb Chocolate Chip Cookies, Breakfast Crack Cookies, Holy Shit S’more Cookie, Bi-Curious Peanut Butter Cookies, Classic Snickerdoodles, Giant Salted Dark Chocolate + Olive Oil Cookies…
• I’ve been obsessed with documentaries…go watch Love Crimes of Kabul. I’d love to know what you think. It’s a pretty fascinating peek into the lives of women in Afghanistan…something we don’t see much of.
• I have two scone recipes with which you could use up your leftover pumpkin. One is my Petite Pumpkin Scones and the other is a copycat adjacent Starbucks Pumpkin Scone Recipe.
• You’ll be hearing from me again on Wednesday as I have THREE, yep, THREE recipes getting posted. I know. It’s exciting. This week is my collaboration/sponsorship/Instagram takeover with the California Strawberry Commission on Wednesday. I have THREE recipes coming out on Wednesday. One recipe is a gorgeous Strawberry Freekah Salad (you’ll die). Another is a Strawberry Cardamom Torte that will be your favorite go-to dessert when you want to dazzle (and it’s the easiest thing you’ve ever made). Lastly, I’m sharing a recipe for some DELICIOUS Strawberry Balsamic Brownies…that we later made into sundaes. It seemed the only natural thing to do. I hope you guys will take the time to pop over to Instagram, follow @castrawberries and like + comment on my posts this Wednesday. Super excited to work with them!!
• Completely fired up to have my work included in these two articles: my Citrus Tacos in this Taco Roundup and my beer-crust pizza in this collection of Labor Day BBQ Recipes.
• Have a fabulous start to your week!! xoxo

–Rebecca xoxo