Pumpkin Spice Cake Cookies with Brown Sugar Frosting
It's cookie season! Well, let's be honest, here at Open Road House, it's always cookie season.
Welcome to our new recipe & craft tutorial blog - your online resource for everything we share to help you make your home more filled with the things that make you happy. Today we're baking pumpkin spice cake cookies with brown sugar frosting. Because this time of year calls for all things pumpkin spice!
These cookies are soft, thick, and cakey with the perfect amount of warm spices. So here are a few tips before you get started, and, disclaimer, as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases, at no expense to you of course. Product links are paid. Nevertheless, these are the products I use and love:
1. Start with the right tools:
If you can find a baking sheet that is larger than your standard cookie sheet, say around 16" x 22", you can save yourself loads of time when baking by cutting down on the number of batches your recipe takes. This is the cookie sheet we use:
These silicone spurtles from Open Road House are our favorite new tools for all things baking. From separating eggs and getting that last bit of dough out of your bowl to stirring big batches of batter and lifting delicate cookies off the sheet, this set does it all. Seriously. We love it. You can purchase a set in light blue or soft gray here:
A kitchen scale makes measuring out ingredients faster, with less mess and more accuracy. We love our kitchen scale made by Nicewell. It's simple, sleek, and is able to handle even our largest batches of cookie dough:
2. Cream your butter and sugar for at least 3 minutes, 4 if you can stand the wait! We find that most people stop creaming between 1 and 2 minutes, and that's just not enough to get the fluffiest, softest imaginable. Put in the extra 2 minutes and you'll be amazed at the difference it makes!
3. Make your own pumpkin pie spice blend! It's not rocket science, it's made from spices you probably already have in your cabinet, and you can customize the blend to suit your own personal taste! Hate nutmeg? Take it out and add a little more of one of the other spices! Don't like ginger? It doesn't have to be in there at all! Our spice blend below uses 4 of the 5 common ingredients. The 5 most common in order of largest portion to smallest portion are: cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, allspice, and clove.
4. Watch our tutorial Video! Seriously, we explain it all and walk you through every step of the process. Watch and subscribe to our new YouTube Channel - "On Wednesday We Bake." We'll be posting helpful videos showing you the details of each recipe, every Wednesday. See you there and happy baking!
Ingredients
(for cookies):
1 c. (2 sticks) unsalted butter room temperature
1 c. sugar
1 t. baking soda
1 t. baking powder
1 t. salt
2 t. pumpkin spice blend ( we used 1-1/2 t. cinnamon, 1/4 t. allspice, pinch nutmeg, pinch clove)
1 egg
1 t. vanilla extract
7.5 oz (half small can) pumpkin puree
2 c. all purpose flour
(for frosting):
4 t. unsalted butter
1/4 c. (or 61g) packed light brown sugar
2 T. milk
2 c. powdered sugar
pinch of salt
1 T. cinnamon
Instructions:
Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy
Add baking powder, soda, salt, and spices and combine with mixer
Add egg and vanilla and combine with mixer
Add pumpkin puree and fold in with spurtle
Sift flour in 1/2 c. portions and fold in after each addition with spurtle
Preheat oven to 350F
Line large baking sheet with parchment paper
Measure out 2oz. cookie dough onto sheet, fitting 8 cookies on the pan
Bake 12min. and promptly remove onto wire rack to cool completely
Allow cookies to cool completely before frosting
For frosting - melt butter and brown sugar in saucepan until sugar is completely melted
Allow sugar mixture to cool slightly before adding to medium bowl
Add powdered sugar, milk, and salt, and combine with mixer
Gently spread frosting onto cookies with small spurtle spreader
Using fine mesh strainer, top frosted cookies with dusting of cinnamon
Please let us know how they turn out and let us know if there's any other recipes you'd like to see from us!