the great pumpkin came early this year, so we ate him

one of the best and worst parts of being a seasoned baker is knowing exactly when you messed up the recipe, way before the batter makes it into the oven.  i love my stand mixer ever so muchly, and as i am writing this, i have decided that something i love so much should have a name (hey, you named your car), so he shall go by stan. stan the mixer. anyway, i know that stan would never deliberately harm my recipes so i will not blame him, i will take all the blame myself. it is just that he makes it so easy to step back and put things away or clean up while he is doing his thing…. and, well, i let the batter beat too long. i figured before i start messing with it, i wanted to see what it would do in the oven; there was an off chance that it would only make them a little bit flat and since they are normally super puffy and moist this would be okay.

as you can see, they were quite flat. still tasty, but flat.

so, i did what any good baker would do… i tampered with the dough until it looked right. little bit of this, little bit of that, and they were as close as they were going to get to normal without going nuts over it. see? much better.

now, one would think that since i just made butterscotch pumpkin cookies, and chocolate chip pumpkin cookies, that i would call it a day. but just like the buttermilk predicament i run into, i run into the pumpkin predicament as well. recipes call for 1 cup of pumpkin. the smallest can of pumpkin that i could find was a cup and a half. what to do with a half a cup of pumpkin? i considered making some ravioli or pancakes or something, but i still have plenty of other things of that nature to eat before they go bad, so i decided against it.

on the same sheet of paper as the recipe for these cookies is the recipe for pumpkin cookies that we made in pre-school. yeah, you read that right, this next recipe is from when i was 3, maybe 4. i assume in an attempt to avoid us playing with raw eggs, this one is vegan friendly (as long as you use non-dairy chips that is, which i did not).  it only calls for butterscotch chips, but i decided that since i was just making them for fun, what the heck… i threw in the butterscotch chips, chocolate chips, and cinnamon chips!

they came out of the oven plenty fluffy! i would like a little more spice to them next time, but i think the trio of chips more than makes up for that!

Recipes:

Great Pumpkin Cookies-

2 cups flour

1 cup oats

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp salt

1 cup margarine, softened

1 cup firmly packed brown sugar

1 cup granulated sugar

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 cup solid pack pumpkin

1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Combine flour, oats, baking soda, cinnamon and salt.  Cream margarine; gradually add sugars, beating until light and fluffy.  Add egg and vanilla; mix well.  Alternate additions of dry ingredients and pumpkin, mixing well after each addition.  Stir in morsels.  Scoop onto greased and floured cookie sheet and cook 12-15 minutes.

Pre-school pumpkin cookies (thanks to the wonderful Mr. Ellis)

¾ cup canned pumpkin

1 cup flour

½ cup sugar

¼ cup margarine

½ tsp. vanilla

¼ tsp. salt

½ tsp. cinnamon

½ tsp. baking soda

½ tsp. baking powder

½ cup butterscotch morsels

Mix all of the above together, except butterscotch morsels. When thoroughly mixed, add morsels.  Drop by tsp. onto greased cookie sheets.  Bake at 375 for about 12-15 minutes.

(I reduced the amounts of everything to accommodate the 1/2 cup of pumpkin that i had, and used brown sugar to add in some of the moisture I was lacking from the missing pumpkin)