Chocolate Chip Cookies w/ Pumpkin & Fresh Ginger
These Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies consist of homemade pumpkin purée, fresh ginger, nutmeg, and chocolate chips for a chewy treat. I made these for halloween in a festive fall cookie mold. Although they also work well as drop cookies!
Equipment
- Mixing Bowl Preferably 2
- Cookie Mold or Baking Sheet
- Oven
Ingredients
- 1 c. unsalted butter preferably unsalted, softened (16 tbsp., 227 g.)
- 1/2 c. sugar (99 g.)
- 1/2 c. brown sugar packed (106 g.)
- 2 c. pumpkin roasted & puréed (or squash, I used kabocha)
- 2 eggs divided
- 1 tsp. vanilla extract
- 2 tsp. ginger fresh or ground is fine
- 2¼ c. all-purpose flour (270 g.)
- 1/2 tsp. baking soda
- 1 tsp. baking powder
- 1/2 tsp. salt
- 1½ tsp. nutmeg
- 2 c. chocolate chips (10 oz. package)
Instructions
Prepare Ingredients
- You can use any number of Roasted Pie Pumpkin, Squash, & Other Gourd. Personally, I used Roasted Kabocha Squash in this recipe because I find most larger squash varieties to be more flavorful and have a brighter hue than typical pie/sugar pumpkins. Although you can use whatever you want! Including pumpkin and squash purée by the can. Roasting them yourself takes a couple of hours and requires aluminum foil, a baking dish, and food processor.
Cookies
- Preheat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.
- Add softened butter, granulated sugar, brown sugar, and pumpkin purée to a large bowl. Whisk until light and fluffy.There is also no over beating at this point! This is when you want to really go for it. Whisk until as light as possible. You won't be able to get them as fluffy as you would with cookie recipes that don't have peanut butter in them. But airiness during this step is absolutely essential. When you think that you've whisked them enough, whisk a little bit longer!
- Add the eggs, one at a time, vanilla extract, and ginger. Mix until just barely incorporated.Do not over beat! It's better to have the egg not incorporated enough than too much. You just don't want the egg to be liquid on top.I also used fresh ginger either minced or grated very finely. Although you can easily substitute powdered. Fresh ginger just has a more robust flavor profile.
- In a separate bowl, whisk the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and nutmeg together. This is highly recommended because it will help to incorporate more easily into the butter mixture, which is essential to getting the correct consistency of cookies. But I do skip it sometimes if I'm in a hurry! For me at home? I probably won't. When baking for other people? Yeah, I'll go the extra mile! It's not like it's that tedious or time consuming.
- Add the flour to the butter mixture and similarly just barely incorporate.This is the exact opposite of the butter mixing process! When you add flour, over mixing will make thee cookies dense and texturally unpleasant. In order to keep the airiness, mix as little as possible to stop seeing white pockets of flour.
- Gently fold in the chocolate chips.
- Press dough into ungreased cookie mold. Make sure only to fill them about 2/3 of the way and to get dough into all of the crevices in the mold.If you don't have or don't want to use a cookie mold, roll the dough into 1-inch balls and place 1 ½ inches apart on ungreased cookie sheet.
- Bake for 14-18 minutes, or until golden brown.
- Let the cookies sit for a couple of minutes before popping out of the mold. They should come out cleanly and easily.Just don't use anything metal to pop them out because it can damage the finish and make them stick in the future! It's best to replace scratched or damaged cookie molds. This can leach Teflon and other non-stick coating into the food.
Tips, Tricks, & Notes
- For more information on the Fundamentals of Baking Cookies, check out my article on the matter. For instance, I recommend making cookies by hand with a fork and adding slightly less flour than called for.