sarahcentric

I love these dudes.
It’s like the all-pumpkin cast of Dazed and Confused.
Alright, alright, alright!

Fall in New York City is definitely excellent, no question. But the leaves have not changed until I am drinking a cider and waiting on a long-ass line for a brown paper bag filled with warm donuts at an orchard stand. You haven’t seen fall foliage until your fingers are covered in cinnamon and sugar, and your stomach is pregnant with one too many donuts.

So I went ahead and booked my Upstate travel for next weekend- which is not a formal process, but definitely very unique to my small hometown. Your trip is booked by calling friends and family which is then spread by word of mouth. It’s important to get all of your requirements out there. “I’ll be Upstate next weekend. Is anyone else coming home? We should get a game of Trivial Pursuit going. Are the leaves changing yet? Let’s go hiking. No, I don’t hate hiking…you always say that, and I always tell you I don’t!”

If you can’t be in Upstate NY for the fall festivities, you better hurry up and start baking-preferably while it’s raining outside, in your yoga pants, listening to an episode of This American Life . You can go balls to the wall and bake an apple pie, but I say start your fall baking with something easy and just a little bit special. Ready? Wait for it, wait for it…

PUMPKIN chocolate chip cookies!

You’re either a) totally grossed out by this idea, b) totally over hearing about it on other baking blogs, c) running to your cabinet to see if you have a can of pumpkin in there. If you chose C, sorry you probably don’t have any pumpkin laying around. But I am here to tell you, it is worth the schlepp to the supermarket. I have been making these cookies for 10 years now and people pretty much go crazy. In fact, I doubled my recipe yesterday so that my co-workers could get their fair share. They are pumpkin loving animals.

These cookies are easy as hell, no different than mixing up your favorite batch of regular chocolate chip cookies. Still they differ slightly in some pretty awesome ways. The batter is very sticky and a little annoying to work with. But they bake up to these super light and cake-y, almost muffin-y type cookies. My good friend at work who is obsessed with these cookies would probably call them “Cuffins”

This recipe is practically perfect in its original form. But might I humbly suggest splitting your chip count between semi-sweet and butterscotch? Joy the Baker uses butterscotch in her version which I was morally opposed to for some time. But I realized my beef against butterscotch came from some childhood trauma. I swallowed a butterscotch candy whole when I was a little girl and was sick for days, (or maybe it was 5 minutes? Time moves so slowly when you’re young and your tummy hurts.)

You don’t have to use the butterscotch, but as they say in Dazed and Confused…

It’d be a lot cooler if you did.

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies
from allrecipes.com

Ingredients:
1 cup canned pumpkin
1 cup white sugar
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 egg
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon milk
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
2 cups semisweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup chopped walnuts (optional)

Directions:
1. Combine pumpkin, sugar, vegetable oil, and egg. In a separate bowl, stir together flour, baking powder, ground cinnamon, and salt. Dissolve the baking soda with the milk and stir in. Add flour mixture to pumpkin mixture and mix well.
2. Add vanilla, chocolate chips and nuts.
3. Drop by spoonful on greased cookie sheet and bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for approximately 10 minutes or until lightly brown and firm.