Dual Domestication: Pumpkin Cookies

Over the past number of years I have made my dislike of pumpkin pie known to my family. My rational is that if pumpkin pie were good you would eat it more than once a year. You would be in a diner in July and when you were offered dessert you would say, "I could really go for a slice of pumpkin pie." I believe if you did this in reality the waitress would look at you like you were insane. Hence my belief that pumpkin pie is not good since if you tried to order it in a month other than November there would be reason to consider you fit for a mental institution.

With such strong feelings against pumpkin pie I was in a real dilemma when we received two sugar pumpkins in our CSA box before Thanksgiving. To be fair, since I volunteer at the farm, I knew these pumpkins were coming since we had harvested them a few weeks before and placed them in storage so I had some time to prepare myself for what I was going to do with them. I was looking to make something sweet and something that could be shared with LJ's coworkers so I settled on a variation of this cookie recipe. I liked the addition of dark chocolate but used regular baking powder, butter, and sugar instead of the more "granola" ingredients called for in the recipe. Also after cooking my pumpkins I realized I had more than enough puree so I eliminated the carrot puree and replaced it with more pumpkin.

The batter was much more like a cake than a cookie and I found putting it in the refrigerator for half an hour helped the cookies set better. Also my pumpkin puree was very wet which may have caused the batter to be extra loose so I would have strained the puree before adding it to the batter. Lastly, I found the cooking time to be much to short for creating a stable cookie. I had to nearly double the cooking time to get a cookie that was crisp enough.