Easy Pumpkin Snickerdoodles are as cute as they are awesome
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These pumpkin snickerdoodles are sure to be a hit: with soft and chewy texture and gentle pumpkin flavor and a little bit of cute pumpkin decoration up top, it’s hard to say no to these easy cookies.
My husband’s favorite cookie is the classic snickerdoodle. I’ve tried many recipes over the years, but I’ve never really been really happy with any of my attempts. I went back to my Gram’s soft sugar cookies and realized that the solution was there all along. These cookies are soft without being pillowy and pleasantly chewy with good pumpkin flavor.
About the pumpkin: it also gives you a beautiful orange tint to the dough without dye. Whether you roll these cookies in plain cinnamon sugar or in sugar mixed with pumpkin pie spice, you’ll get a memorable cookie.
Pumpkin Snickerdoodles
Why these snickerdoodles will put a song in your day
- Perfect for leftover pumpkin: I know there’s a lot of pumpkin recipes that always leave you with a lit bit leftover in a can. This is a great recipe to use up that extra since it needs just 5 tablespoons of pumpkin.
- Quick: These cookies just need 15 minutes to put together, 30 minutes to chill, and 20ish minutes to bake.
- Fun decoration: You can skip the simple piping with the pumpkin icing, but I think they look cute! Plus it’s always when decorations reflect what’s IN something you’ve made.
Fun places to take your Fall snickerdoodle cookies
- Game night!: I usually make a batch of Crispy Oatmeal Cookies for our monthly board game night at church, but these snickerdoodles would be well-received.
- Potlucks: There’s no fancy ingredients or methods here, just good flavors that everyone can enjoy.
- Bake sales: pack these up in cellophane bags along with a batch of peanut butter rice krispie treats, and the aforementioned oatmeal cookies, and you’ll sell out in minutes.
- Sports games: be the cookie Mom who brings treats for the team!
- Lunchbox treats: you can make tiny versions of these cookies for a fun lunchbox treat. These cookies with a little post-it encouragement note could be just the lift your kids need for the day.
Ingredients for Pumpkin Snickerdoodles
- Butter
- Oil, preferably expeller pressed
- Canned pumpkin
- Granulated sugar
- Powdered sugar
- Egg
- Vanilla paste
- All-purpose flour
- Baking soda
- Cream of tartar
- Salt
- Pumpkin pie spice (or cinnamon)
- Cocoa: just a tiny bit for color in the sugar you roll the dough in
Tips for making great pumpkin snickerdoodle cookies
- Don’t skip chilling: the dough is very soft to start out with, but after 30 minutes of fridge time, it will have absorbed the flour. In that time, the butter will also firm up, making it easy to roll the cookies into balls.
- Just add cocoa: A tiny bit of cocoa in the rolling sugar will give the cookies a little more color contrast. You won’t taste it, but you’ll see a slightly darker spice color on the finished cookies.
- Don’t bother flattening the dough: There’s no need to flatten the dough balls here. The dough will melt down into perfect craggy snickerdoodles.
- Just add ice cream: These cookies would be incredible as a base for ice cream sandwiches with a scoop of cinnamon ice cream!
Pumpkin Snickerdoodles
- Total Time: 67 minutes (including 30 minutes of chilling)
- Yield: about 24 cookies 1x
Description
Soft and chewy snickerdoodles get a Fall makeover with some added pumpkin and some extra flavor from pumpkin pie spice. Pipe on some easy adorable pumpkins with a simple pumpkin glaze, and you’ve got a cute Fall snickerdoodle that’s as perfect as a lunchbox treat as they are for a Fall bake sale.
Ingredients
Dough
- 1 sticks butter, at room temperature (113 g)
- 1/2 cup granulated sugar (100 g)
- 1/2 cup powdered sugar (60 g)
- 1/4 cup oil (preferably cold-pressed safflower or sunflower) (59 mL)
- 1/4 cup canned pumpkin (57 g)
- 1 large egg
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract or vanilla paste
- 2 cups plus 2 Tablespoons all-purpose flour (276 g)
- 1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice or cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
For baking
- 1/4 cup granulated sugar
- 1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice or cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon cocoa powder
Decorating the cookies
- 1/2 cup powdered sugar (60 g)
- 1 Tablespoon canned pumpkin
- Black or brown sprinkles
Instructions
- Beat the butter with the sugars in a stand mixer or with a hand mixer just to soften it. Slowly drizzle in the oil with the mixer on until you have a smooth mixture.
- Mix in the pumpkin, egg, and the vanilla. Scrape down the sides of the bowl, and then mix for a few more seconds until you have a very smooth batter.
- Whisk the flour, pumpkin pie spice, baking soda, cream of tartar and salt in another bowl.
- With the mixer on, slowly add the flour to the butter mixture just until combined.
- Chill the dough for 30 minutes.
- Towards the end of the chilling time, preheat the oven to 350 F (180 C).
- Mix the 1/4 cup of granulated sugar with the pumpkin pie spice and cocoa in a shallow bowl. Scoop out balls of dough in balls with about 2 tablespoons of dough (I’m using a Vollrath black scoop to make it easier). Roll the balls first in your hands to round them off, and then roll the balls in the sugar.
- Place 6 balls on a sheet tray.
- Loading up the oven with 2 sheet trays at a time, bake the cookies for 6 minutes. After 6 minutes, rotate the sheet trays 180 degrees, and then swap the trays from top to bottom (or bottom to top as it were). Bake for 5 more minutes (11 minutes total).
- Allow the cookies to cool for about 5 minutes before moving them to a cooling rack to finish cooling.
- Bake the rest of the cookies in the same way.
- To finish the cookies, mix the 1/2 cup of powdered sugar and 1 Tablespoon of pumpkin into a thick glaze. Scoop it into a small Ziploc, and then seal everything up. Clip the corner. Squeeze out rough circles of glaze onto the tops of the cookies. Finish the “pumpkins” with a sprinkle as a stem, and add a few more sprinkles to form ribs on the pumpkins.
- Store the cookies in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 1 week. You can also freeze these cookies or the dough itself for up to 3 months.
Notes
Sprinkles: Look for multi-packs of sprinkles—the kind that has several different types of sprinkles in the same containers. They often have sugar sprinkles and jimmies, so you can easily create the look of the pumpkin decoration on these cookies.
- Prep Time: 15 minutes
- Cook Time: 22 minutes
- Category: Cookies
- Method: Oven
- Cuisine: American
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 1 cookie
- Calories: 141
- Sugar: 11.3 g
- Sodium: 78.8 mg
- Fat: 6.4 g
- Carbohydrates: 19.7 g
- Protein: 1.4 g
- Cholesterol: 17.9 mg
