Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies
These soft and cakey Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies are flavored with pumpkin puree and pumpkin pie spices, and studded with chocolate chips!
If you’ve got leftover pumpkin puree that needs to be used up, this is a fun sweet treat to make with it.
When fall rolls around, I stock up on sugar pumpkins and make my own fresh pumpkin puree.
In additions to soups and savory dishes, I love making fresh Pumpkin Pie, Pumpkin Muffins, a good old-fashioned Pumpkin Roll, and so much more. I go kind of crazy, hah!
Since pumpkin puree does not freeze well, I try to find places to put it without wasting, and these cookies are one of my favorite excuses.
I often like to call these cookies “pumpkin clouds” because they are so light in texture. The texture is almost like a whoopee pie!
Because the texture is cakey and muffin-like, the chocolate chips add a welcome contrast to the texture, and I find the chocolate flavor goes really well with the pumpkin.
How to Make Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies:
Since these are pumpkin cookies, we start with a spiced flour. Warm spices like cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and nutmeg are perfect:
The spiced flour gets mixed with our wet ingredients, which includes butter, sugar, egg, fresh pumpkin puree, and vanilla extract:
Note that fresh pumpkin is normally much lighter in color as compared to the canned stuff, so that’s why it looks so light!
When those two come together with some chocolate chips, you get a big bowl of pumpkin chocolate chip cookie dough:
The cookie dough is now ready to be baked…with maybe a few spoonfuls enjoyed here and there, haha! It’s a pretty delicious cookie dough.
The full recipe and a step-by-step video are below if you’d like more guidance. Enjoy!
Can you freeze Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies? Yes, store in an airtight container for up to 2 months.
Can you freeze the dough too? Yes, but I’d recommend portioning it out into individual scoops first, so you don’t have to thaw the entire batch of dough before baking. Add a few minutes of bake time if baking straight from frozen.
Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup unsalted butter softened
- 1/2 cup granulated sugar
- 1/2 cup packed dark brown sugar
- 1 large egg
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1/2 cup fresh pumpkin puree (canned is okay too)
- 7.5 oz by weight all-purpose flour (1.5 cups if measuring)
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1/4 tsp kosher salt
- 3/4 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1/4 tsp ground ginger
- 1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
- 1/4 tsp ground cloves
- 1 cup semisweet chocolate chips
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. , and line a cookie sheet with parchment paper.
- Using a handheld or stand mixer, cream together the butter and both sugars for about 60 seconds, until combined.
- Beat in the egg, and once that has been incorporated, beat in the vanilla and pumpkin puree until combined.
- In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and cloves to combine.
- Add this spiced flour mixture to the wet ingredients, and mix until all of the flour streaks are almost gone.
- Mix in the chocolate chips. At this point there should be no more flour streaks, but take care not to overmix the cookie dough.
- Use a large cookie scoop to portion little heaps of cookie dough onto your baking sheet (I had 12).
- Bake for 15 minutes, until the cookie dough is no longer raw, then let cool on a wire rack. Enjoy!
Notes
Nutrition
Nutrition is estimated using a food database and is only intended to be used as a guideline for informational purposes.
Post updated September 2018. Originally published October 2013. This post contains an affiliate link.
37 Comments on “Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies”
Hi Joanne!
Somehow, when I baked these, they came out like little muffin tops, rather than cookies, like shown in the picture. I thought I followed the recipe exactly. Perhaps the butter was not soft enough?
The taste came out great, very cakey, but almost like a muffin! Did I miss something?
Hi Amber, it doesn’t sound like you did anything wrong. They are very cakey cookies, that’s sort of the nature of a pumpkin cookie. Sally from Sally’s Baking Addiction might have a solution for you though, as she states in this recipe she spent a ton of time developing a non-cakey pumpkin cookie. I haven’t tried it personally but she’s a great blogger and I would suspect you’ll have success. Here’s the recipe: http://sallysbakingaddiction.com/2013/09/04/pumpkin-chocolate-chip-cookies/
I. Want. These. NOW!! I love pumpkin and chocolate together, and these look simply awesome!
What an amazing fall pumpkin recipe. I can’t wait to make these pumpkin cookies sometime soon! (:
I freeze pumpkin puree all the time without any problems (I’ve put up four batches just in the last two weeks). Well, no problems that I know of 🙂
And this recipe will be great for this week! My son and I are going away on Thursday, and while I won’t make him a pumpkin pie before we go (which is what he really wants), I can definitely make these and we can take them with us.
Really?!? That is exciting. Are you talking about fresh pumpkin? Now that I think about it, I have only tried freezing the canned variety (it came out like a tough fibered orange mass with all the water pushed out of it). I will try it again. Hope you have a great trip!
Yep, fresh.
What I do is cut the pumpkin into pieces (how many depends on how big the pumpkin is), remove the seeds, and put it in a 350F oven until tender.
Let it cool, then scrape into a food processor or blender.
Add 1/2 cup water and puree. (The water helps with the consistency.)
Then put it all into a strainer over a deep bowl, put a plate on top, and put a big can on the plate. Pop the whole thing into the fridge. You should get at least a cup of liquid by the next day.
Take the pumpkin and put it into a freezer bag. Spread it flat and freeze it. (You can also measure it into the freezer bag so that you know how much you have for later.)
Works a treat 🙂 (I’ve put up three bags so far, used one for scones and muffins, and I have four more pumpkins to do this to. My son loves pumpkin pie 😉 )
Thanks for sharing this Char, it sounds like a really great method that you’ve clearly done many times =)
This looks so yummy! Pinning!!
Mmmmm… love pumpkin in this chocolate chip cookies. Comforting 😀
I have a recipe for these that call for white chocolate chips but I think I like yours better.
My friend made your original version of these last fall, and they were fantastic! I’ll definitely have to try this new version.
Hi Myrtle, it’s the same recipe, just new photos, writing, and video! PS I see you have a website now, how exciting!
Hahaha, no, it’s not a cooking blog (I cook frequently but not enough to qualify one), it’s a random thing my friend and I put together. I think it just went on because it’s hosted on WordPress as well.
These sound great! Do you think it would be possible to use cool coconut oil instead of butter?
Hi! I honestly no have no experience baking with coconut oil. If you try it please report back the results in case others are curious too.
So I’ve started to age my cookie dough based on one of your previous posts, what are your thoughts on aging these cookies? Would it hurt the whoopie pie like texture you think?
Hi Matt, that’s pretty cool! I’m unsure about the aging for this recipe because it uses baking soda as the leavener instead of baking powder. I’ll have to try it!
These look delicious! Love the addition of the pumpkin and spices. I will be making these soon!
Thanks Stephanie. I just love pumpkin baking!
Ooh, I love the look and sound of these! I just made pumpkin whoopie pies for the first time last week and they were awesome. I’m all about the warm spices of fall! And since I didn’t have the called-for pumpkin pie spice, I made my own with cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice and cloves. 🙂 Yay!
And ginger! I forgot the ginger. The ginger is key.
That’s awesome! I usually make my own too =)
Just made these tonight. So good- i love a cakey cookie and pumpkin and fall food! I had plenty to freeze also for later this fall. Thank you for posting this. For some reason my dough was a little thinner than your pictures look. Not sure what i did wrong to make it like a cake batter but after adding about a cup more flour the dough was thick enough to hold together. Any thoughts on where I went wrong for next time.
Hi Susanna, the only two things I could think of is either your butter was too warm or maybe your eggs were too warm? Were the eggs straight out of the fridge or were they at room temperature?
Hi Joanne,
I usually pull my out my fridge stuff all at one time so I don’t have to keep opening the door so it is totally possible that everything got room temp. I will remember this for next time. Thank you.
Yummy! I made these for my office and they were almost completely gone by the end of the meeting, even beating out the 2 other batches of cookies people brought in. Unfortunately, raw egg doesn’t keep me from eating the dough… 🙂
YAY thanks for letting me know Ellen! I love these too. And raw egg doesn’t scare me at all either hahahaha.
Ooh I love pumpkin! And cookies. These look delish.
I will be DEFINITELY trying this one when I get a chance..pumpkin is a great ingredient to use in the fall/winter!
Also, maybe in addition to giving directions of how to use mixers and other tools like them, you could give tips on how to do it without those tools…for those ppl who don’t have them, like me!!
Miss you friend!
Hey Mariana, You can always make recipes like this by hand, it just takes a little longer and takes some elbow grease, and I know you have arms of steel =) Just mix everything in a bowl in the order listed in the directions with a wooden spoon until the flour just disappears. I just use the mixer because I have it and it makes life easier. I’m excited for you to make these!