Healthy Pumpkin Cookies for Fall Festivities

Welcome, fall! You came so suddenly! This time of year is mahvelous--chilly and bright, multicolor trees like paintings--and I'm officially in baking mode. That means my usual morning begins with some insatiable urge to bake something warm and sweet, yet robust and healthy. I woke up yesterday knowing I was going to make a Halloween treat, but with all the clownish candy and whack orange icing in the stores, how to celebrate the season without such high risk of dying a fat and painful death?

I came across a wonderful recipe for pumpkin chocolate chip cookies by this sweet gal, but I just made it a bit more my style. These cookies were fun, simple to make, and totally fuh-reaking yummy without being too sweet, which makes me feel better about eating four at a time. Bonus: they look like cookies but have a consistency closer to a muffin, so you get a two-fer by having every right to smear them with some butter and/or local honey, apple butter, berry jam, etc. Epic!

Here's the breakdown for these sweet beasts:

Wet Ingredients

1 cup canned pumpkin purée (or prepare your own from a fresh pie pumpkin!)

3/4 cup sugar (for baking I use organic Sucanat, an unrefined cane sugar, but one's sugar is a very personal choice)

1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce

1 tbsp ground flaxseed, mixed with 3 tbsp warm water (this is a substitution for one egg, which you could use instead, but I find flax to be a superbly healthy alternative)

1 tbsp vanilla extract

a smattering of butter or Earth Balance spread for greasing the cookie sheets

Dry Ingredients

2 cups whole wheat flour (you could use all-purpose or a combination of the two, but I like the heartiness of whole wheat in baked goods)

1 cup raisins (or apricots, walnuts, chocolate or cinnamon chips--whatever turns you on! I used 1/2 cup pumpkin seeds in my second batch)

2 tsp baking powder

2 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp sea salt

1/8 tsp nutmeg (I like nutmeg a lot, so I could have used more, but use your own judgment with strong spices like these)

1/8 tsp ground cloves

1. Preheat oven to 350. Grease a couple of cookie sheets with that butter or Earth Balance, which is what I use.

2. Before combining ingredients, set aside a small bowl for the flaxseed and water. It needs a few minutes on its own to activate the omega-3s. While that's gellin', combine dry ingredients (flour, baking powders, spices, salt) in a medium sized bowl, holding the raisins (or whatever) to fold in at the end. Combine wet ingredients (pumpkin, sugar, applesauce, flax, vanilla) in a larger bowl. You will be adding the dry to the wet later, so initially reserving the wet for the large bowl is a good idea.

3. Gradually add dry mixture to the wet. Spoon onto cookie sheet, about 2 inches apart. The dough will be quite wet and sticky, which isn't the best for rolling into balls, but just glop them on as best you can. They bake into these gnarly muffin tops, a look I rather like in my cookies. Can't say that for everything.

4. Bake for 11-14 mins. Let cool for a few minutes, but do be sure to try at least one straight from the oven! Heaven!