Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies - The Perfect Fall Treat

Who doesn’t love pumpkin in the fall?  I know my family absolutely LOVES it.  OK - so – the hubby and I can do without pumpkin pie (although our boys can’t get enough) – but I’m happy with pumpkin bread, pumpkin cake, and what’s even better?  Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies. 

A friend of mine surprised me a couple of weeks ago by having her children deliver a batch of these cookies right to my door one afternoon.  They were so delicious, soft, and full of flavor - I insisted on getting the recipe. This is straight from Food Network and super easy.  Make a few batches this season and surprise your friends and neighbors with some of these yummy treats. 

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies
Makes 60 cookies
Recipe courtesy of Food Network

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1 cup white sugar
1 cup light brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup canned pumpkin puree
3 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon ground ginger
¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
¼ teaspoon ground cloves
2 cups (12-ounce bag) milk chocolate chips, not semisweet (I swapped this out for dark chocolate chips)
Nonstick cooking spray or parchment paper (I used parchment paper)

Heat the oven to 350 degrees.  Spray cookies sheets with nonstick spray or line them with parchment paper. 

Using a mixer, beat the butter until smooth.  Beat in the white and brown sugars, a little at a time, until the mixture is light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs, 1 at a time, then mix in the vanilla and pumpkin puree.

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and cloves.  Slowly beat the flour mixture into the batter in thirds.  Stir in the chips. 

Scoop the cookie dough by heaping tablespoons onto the prepared cookie sheets and bake for 15-20 minutes or until the cookies are browned around the edges.  Remove the cookie sheets from the oven and let them rest for 2 minutes.  Take the cookies off with a spatula and cool them on wire racks.

Chocolate Pizzelles

Pizzelle making is a tradition in my rather large Italian family..... and for some, it's not just during the holidays, but all year round!   I have never actually made them by myself.....until this year.  I've helped my dad in the past, watched my brother make them, seen photos of other family members pizzelles, this year I was ready for a solo attempt. 

I'm not big into holiday baking, I'm usually so exhausted by the time December rolls around and getting through all of the parties - it doesn't happen.  But this fall, I purchased a Cucina Pro Pizzelle Maker from my cousin Dino at Valente's Deli Bakery & Italian Market and my parents brought it down for me during a recent visit.  A pizzelle iron is key to making pizzelles - so it will be something you have to purchase if you don't have one!  Here is an image of the one I have below. 

You may remember that I visited Valente's Deli Bakery & Italian Market a few months ago - you can check out that blog post here.

Making these Italian cookies really isn't hard - the first couple of pizzelles sometimes stick.  I sprayed my iron with a little bit of olive oil spray before getting started.

The recipe below is a combination of what was in the book that came with the iron as well as input from my dad.  Everyone in my family has their own recipe....and like many dishes my family makes, most don't want to share their secrets!  The hubby isn't a big fan of anise, so I decided to start with a batch of chocolate pizzelles instead of traditional ones with anise (some use seed, some use oil - we'll save that for another blog post!)

These make great gifts for the holidays - I remember giving them to MY teachers each year before Christmas Break.  My parents were even clever enough to save coffee cans throughout the year and wrap them with Christmas paper.....pizzelles fit PERFECTLY into a coffee can....although, can you still buy coffee in a can?  Not sure about that one....

I hope you have fun with your pizzelle making this year, I look forward to adding it as an annual tradition in my home!

Chocolate Pizzelles
Makes about 2 dozen

3 large eggs
1 cup sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 stick butter, melted and cooled
1 3/4 cup all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
3 tablespoons cocoa

Beat eggs and sugar until light yellow.  Add cooled, melted butter (make sure it is cooled so you don't end up with scrambled eggs) and vanilla.  Beat until blended.  Sift remaining ingredients and add to mixture.  Fold until just blended.

Heat pizzelle iron. I would suggest spraying with a little bit of olive oil spray first.  Add about 1 tablespoon of batter on grid just behind the center of the pattern.  Bake until golden brown, about 30-40 seconds.  Remove and cool on a rack.  Repeat with remaining batter.

Christmas Cookies - The Creativity of Our Children

We are hosting our annual holiday party this weekend.  As a first, we decided this year to have a pre-party party at our home this week.  Our to do list was short, we had some good friends who were unable to attend this weekend - so invited a couple of families over to let the kids play, catch up, and have a few cocktails. 

This was a very impromptu gathering - surprisingly, I never know where we will be in the completion of pre-party tasks a couple of days before the party. The hubby is notorious for coming up with large projects to tackle right before our big event.  We had plenty to drink in the house - I put out some cheese, crackers, fruit, veggies, hummus and ranch dressing - it was perfect! 

I then thought it would be fun to have a cookie decorating station for the kids.  I made a bunch of gingerbread cookies in different shapes, purchased a tub of frosting, sprinkles, and some red hots.   We had 6 total children, 4 boys and 2 girls - all under the age of 7.  They had a great time! 

I told them they could decorate the first one and then eat it, but that I needed all of the other ones decorated for our holiday party dessert table!  The adults all looked at me like I was crazy.  This was great motivation for the kids - they were so creative and we were all super proud of them.  As they continued to lick their fingers and then go back to decorating their cookies, the parents still questioned my decision - I stuck with it. 

I was convinced tonight by the hubby that it would not be the best idea to serve these, but what a fun night for our children!  These are now safely packed away in storage containers and ready to hand out to the hard working children this weekend. 

I used to panic about doing something like this - I'm not a fan of cleaning up messes I didn't make.  But - I have lightened up over the years, this didn't stress me out at all.  In fact, I was so impressed by the girl (OK, there were two but one was a 1 year old and she didn't do much but eat her own cookie) who took her extra sprinkles from her paper towel, folded the paper towel in half, and poured over the finished cookies.   I know she has had WAY more cookie decorating experience than I have - but what a resourceful child!  My little one on the other hand had used so many green sprinkles on just one cookie, you could no longer see it!  Once un-earthed, I suggested that he use those sprinkles to decorate future cookies.  Not surprisingly, one of my girlfriends there said that my little one continued to eat those green sprinkles with his fingers but keeping an eye on me the entire time to see if I would catch him.  I love him.

This year, remember the joy of the season.  Look into a child's eyes to see the wonder.  I have finally stopped what I am doing to do just that this year - and it is a look I hope to never forget.

Halloween Cookie Decorating Station

This year, I volunteered at my older son's classroom Halloween party - and to no one's surprise, I volunteered for the snack station!  There were 5 total stations - snacks, spooky storytime, Halloween bingo, and 2 craft stations.

Everything had to be store bought - so went with a popular choice of "decorate your own Halloween cookie".  The hubby volunteered for the Halloween party in the Kindergarten class last year and was put in charge of snacks - his advice "those kids used a lot of frosting and a lot of sprinkles" - man, he wasn't kidding! 

I had anywhere between 3-5 children at my station for about 15 minutes each.  Just enough time to decorate and eat!  I gave them each a sugar cookie, then they decorated them with orange frosting and added LOTS of Halloween themed sprinkles - I mean LOTS.  They didn't seem to care that all of the sprinkles fell off if they didn't keep their cookie level once it was time to eat them.  Some of them thought it was even funnier when the sprinkles did fall onto their paper towels - then they could just eat them with their fingers!

Fortunately I remembered to bring a big package of baby wipes with me to help them clean up - their hands were covered in mostly orange, black, and purple - and many of the 1st graders left my table with black lips and teeth!

I added a few photos below of cookies being decorated as well as some of the final products - they looked awesome!   My oldest was super proud that his friends all said his mommy had the best station at the party (well of course they thought that....I had the cookies!)

If you are hosting a Halloween party or volunteering at a class party - this is always a great go to idea!

Basketball Sugar Cookies

My oldest son joined his first team sport this fall and we couldn't be more excited about it and proud of him!  He has always been a swimmer - and is quite good for his age (if I do say so myself!)  He has been asking about basketball for a couple of years now - but has been a little young to play in any leagues.  This summer, he went to a basketball camp and LOVED it! 

He had his first practice and game over the weekend and had a blast.  I made these basketball cookies for him to celebrate the occasion.  I used a package sugar cookie (you could do this or make your own from scratch) and I followed the same royal icing recipe and decorating instructions from the Brown Eyed Baker that I used for my Power Ranger Samurai Cookies.  I need to work on the steadiness of my hand - but I'm fairly new to cookie decorating! 

My son was so excited when he saw these - and my little one of course too!  He got to enjoy his during the actual game!

Power Ranger Cookies & Party Favors

I made these adorable, um, I mean "fierce" Power Ranger cookies for my older one's birthday.  They were part of the goodie bag for our party guests.  As I have mentioned before - I am not a baker, I really thought these were going to be harder than they actually were!  Sadly, I was so busy getting all of this baking done, a few of the photos were only taken by my iPhone (at night) - and I never remembered to go back and take a good photo of the cookies with my Canon before putting them in the favor bags!  Lesson learned....

The cookie cut outs were from Target, Ninja Bread Men Cookie Cutters.  These were courtesy of big bro who found them and ended up buying them for me!  Thanks brother!

I used a straightforward sugar cookie mix - I had enough going on, I didn't need to make sugar cookies from scratch too!

Icing cookies is not something I have done a lot of - so I found instructions on how to use royal icing to decorate cut out sugar cookies from another blogger,  Brown Eyed Baker.  They were great, step-by-step instructions and helped make my cookies turn out to be a success! 

I learned that the most important part is to use a large enough tip for the border so that when you "flood" the cookies, you don't have any "leaks"!  I had that happen a couple of times!  Five different colors were used to represent all of the Power Rangers, I used Wilton gel icing colors to get a nice, rich color - always remember to wear gloves when using these!  I learned my lesson with a variety of blues I used for my little one's 2 year old birthday party cupcakes last year.... 

Decorating underway

Red Rangers are ready to "flood"

To finish off the cookies, I took a look at a picture of all of the Power Rangers and iced on the black masks and belts.

iPhone photo!

I loved how these came out!  I went to the party store to get the little ninjas to attach to the favor bags and made the mistake of taking the hubby and my boys.  We ended up buying more Power Ranger "goodies" so the hubby put together another little favor bag that we then tied to the cookie bag. 

Cookies with Ninja attached

Cookies with Ninja attached

Final Party Favors!

Click on this link to check out the Power Ranger Samurai Birthday Cake