Definition of insanity – doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome.  Fortunately, this weekend of baking with pumpkin was much more successful than my previous 2 attempts (see here and here).  After Halloween had passed and I saw all these really yummy looking pumpkin chocolate chip cookies in the stores that I couldn’t eat (because of being gluten-intolerant), I really wanted to try making some again.  So I did.  And this time I was successful!  Unfortunately, and this is a trend that I’m seeing more of these days, I adapted a recipe so much without measuring what I was doing, so it’s difficult for me to add the recipe to the website – I’ll just have to make them again and measure this time!  And then, because I had a tin of pumpkin puree open, I felt I just had to use it in some other recipes I’d been wanting to try for ages.

Pumpkin chocolate chip cookies:

This was an adaptation from a recipe I had for soft pumpkin cookies – I added some chocolate chips and some extra spices.  They turned out really soft and chewy – they didn’t spread much in the oven so that’s why they don’t have the classic ’round cookie’ shape, more like just being dropped from a spoon onto the cookie sheet!  But the taste was definitely there – a success!

Pumpkin snickerdoodles:

I used to love snickerdoodles when I was growing up.  Actually I loved the dough more.  The recipe my mum had required the dough to be chilled overnight before baking, and I think on average there was less than half the dough originally made in the mixer available to be baked into cookies the following day.  This recipe was no exception to that tradition.  Although the recipe didn’t call for any chilling, so it was ‘one for the tray, one for my mouth’ … etc.  These turned out surprisingly light and fluffy inside, but again, I adapted the recipe by more than I can remember so I’ll just HAVE to make them again!

Peanut butter pumpkin fudge:

There is a National Peanut Butter Fudge day coming up (Nov 20) that I decided to get a head start on.  This recipe called for pumpkin puree as well as peanut butter and white chocolate to make the fudge part.  I added almost double the amount of peanut butter, because I wanted that real peanut butter taste to come through, and I loved it.  Didn’t really taste the pumpkin in it, but it just gave an added edge to the overall fudge.  I liked it, Henry didn’t.

Pumpkin gingerbread cookies:

Again, this was part of the US National Food Day quest, for Gingerbread Day (Nov 21) and I thought I’d try the substitute of pumpkin puree instead of egg in a cookie recipe again.  So I used a recipe I had for Pfeffernusse and did the pumpkin vs egg thing.  Again, these didn’t spread in the oven, but they still turned out pretty cool.

So I made lots of stuff this weekend.  And I ate lots of the dough.  So this week I’m back to trying to eat more healthy … until next weekend when I need to make some more things for the quest, like cupcakes and sundaes.

Please let me know in the comments below if you’d like to see any of the above recipes on this website – it will give me an excuse to make these again!

As always, if you like what you see, please enter your e-mail address in the area on the right hand side and you will receive updates when I post new recipes, or try new things (like this post).  And tell your friends and family about it too – I’d love to hear from you, even if you just want to encourage me!

Until next time, enjoy cooking at home.

Sarah