Pumpkin Gingersnaps

Time to fall back. It’s November. Which means, no more whining about stores jumping the gun and putting out Christmas decorations early. We’re officially into the holiday season so it’s time to suck it up, turn the heat on in the house finally, and accept the fact the holidays are upon us. I went to Target yesterday thinking I would score lots of candy for baking post Halloween, but I was too late. All that was left were some dog halloween costumes and the brown candy corn that no one would eat, even if it was 75% off.

I figured I would use the extra hour today to be a little proactive in getting my cookie baking and blogging done earlier in the evening. I was inspired to go full speed ahead into Christmas baking, but decided it was only fair to ease all of you into the season and not shock your systems with peppermint just yet. So I combined my favorite autumnal flavor of Pumpkin with a classic holiday cookie – the gingersnap. After some browsing through some of my favorite blogs, I came across this Pumpkin Gingersnap recipe on one of my favorite blogs TwoPeasandTheirPod and decided to give it a try. Also, in my shopping adventures today I scored two new cookie sheets and sil-pat lines from the William Sonoma outlet that I was excited to use today.

Ingredients:

• ½ cup of butter, softened
• 1 cup granulated sugar, plus more for rolling the cookies
• ½ cup of pure pumpkin
• ¼ cup of molasses
• 1 large egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 ⅓ cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 2 teaspoons cinnamon
• 1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
• 1 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

Step 1: Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cream together butter and sugar. Add in pumpkin and molasses and mix well.

Step 2: Add vanilla and egg and mix until incorporated.

Step 3: Sift together the dry ingredients and add to the wet batter and mix well.

Step 4: Using a medium-cookie scoop. scoop even-size balls of dough and roll them lightly in sugar to coat them. Place them at least an inch apart on a sil-pat or parchment-lined baking sheet. (Look how fancy my new William Sonoma ones look). Bake for about 8-10 minutes.

It’s like autumn and winter got together shook hands and decided to share their best flavors in one cookie. The sugar coating gives these cookies a little crunch, but they are oh-so-soft and chewy when you bite into them. It’s hard to not eat more than one, especially when they make the house smell absolutely heavenly with the cloves, ginger and cinnamon flavors.

Everything has been a bit crazy in life lately, so I took this weekend to try to catch up on a lot of things. We had another tennis match yesterday afternoon and crushed our opponents as the “young animalz /working girls” doubles team. Joining this tennis team has been one of the best things I’ve done. We have a great group of ladies on our team and it fuels my competitive needs for the week. One of our opponents yesterday had a striking resemblance to Celine Dion, so I just had a few Celine tunes in my head jamming out when we were playing yesterday to calm my nerves and we came through with a victory. Boom. (Taking Chances is my go-to Celine song, in case you are ever looking for some inspiration).

Last night was one of those nights that had the potential to be disasterous but turned out to be the absolute perfect night out with friends. We’ve already covered the fact I am a Yankees fan living in Boston, so while I understand the Sox fans deserve to have their happy times celebrating the world series victory, I still get annoyed by how in-your-face many of the lovely Sox fans are. We tried to go to our favorite bar early last night (7:30) but it was jam packed with bros on bros on bros who had been day drinking for the parade. So the four of us headed to Lucky’s and had one of the most entertaining nights with random Irish men sitting at our table, creepy bros, and an epic mix of songs to jam out to. I ran into two friends I haven’t seen in a long time at the bar who said “Every time you post a cookie picture on Facebook, I just think ‘THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT I WANT RIGHT NOW.” Its always nice to hear the Salted Cookie has fans beyond my coworkers, my mom, and my grandpa. And the epic evening ended with the cops showing up to our door at 1am when we were already in PJs. But that’s a story for another day 🙂

We are also incapable of taking a nice photo. But I do love this one.

And if you made it this far down in the post, here is your heads up that TheSaltedCookie is taking a little vacay in the sun at the end of the week. So instead of baking cookies next Sunday I will be drinking a cocktail on a beach chair on an island in the Caribbean. Obviously just to explore another part of the world in search of the next great cookie inspiration.