One of the stars of the Cherries in Winter cookie swap party is also one of the easiest recipes. If you have any pumpkin left over from Thanksgiving, use it to make these soft, spicy treats.
Pumpkin Cookies
Cookie dough:
1 cup sugar
1 cup butter
1 cup pumpkin
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spices
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups flour
Icing:
1/2 cup brown sugar
4 tablespoons milk or soymilk
3 tablespoons butter
3/4 cup powdered sugar
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cream sugar and butter, and mix in the egg and vanilla. In a separate bowl, mix together all dry ingredients. Fold sugar, butter, egg, and vanilla into dry ingredients. Add pumpkin and mix together. Drop tablespoons of dough onto cookie sheet and bake for 10-12 minutes.
When cookies are done baking, boil brown sugar, milk, and butter for 3 minutes. Stir in powdered sugar and remove from heat. Allow cookies to cool, then drizzle them with icing mixture.
Makes 4 dozen.
cherries in winter 
December 5, 2009 at 3:43 pm
I’m assuming (and hoping as I try this) that the second “1 cup butter” in the recipe should be “1 cup flour.”
December 6, 2009 at 11:02 pm
Mea cuppa! It should read “2 cups flour.” My apologies, and that will teach me not to post these recipes late at night after eating too many of the cookies… (For current visitors, the recipe has been amended and is now correct.)
December 7, 2009 at 12:36 pm
2 cups! Aha! That explains why my cookies were so very, very soft….! Thanks for the correction.
December 28, 2009 at 8:50 pm
A great idea for future recipes this. Thank you for sharing it. Have you noticed how so many people appear to be cooking again? I wonder if the lack of funds due to the current climate has something to do with it and we all appear to be cooking again! its great!
January 1, 2010 at 6:00 pm
That was totally my motivation, as I wrote about in Cherries in Winter. Cooking at home saved me a ton of money, and I also found a new passion! Sure, I had to conduct a few experiments and use my patient husband as a guinea pig, but he really appreciated my efforts. Most of the time… 😉
Also, when we cook at home, we know what goes into the food, and what doesn’t (too much salt and high fructose corn syrup, for example, don’t usually make it into any of my recipes).
Thanks for writing and happy cooking!