Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Cookies

These pumpkin cookies bake up plush and pillow-soft rather than chewy, which is exactly what canned pumpkin does to a cookie dough. The puree adds enough moisture to push the texture from cookie territory into something closer to a tender little cake. Bittersweet chocolate chips cut through the sweetness and keep things from veering into baby-food territory.

The technique is forgiving but the mixing order matters. Wet ingredients first, then add the flour and leaveners. Dissolving the baking soda in a teaspoon of milk before adding it is the trick to even distribution. Soda clumps in dry flour will leave bitter pockets in finished cookies.

Drop full tablespoons onto a parchment-lined sheet. They spread modestly and need room. Pull them when the edges look set but the tops still look slightly underdone. Pumpkin cookies firm up dramatically as they cool.

Pro Tips

• Use pure canned pumpkin, not pumpkin pie filling. Pie filling is pre-sweetened and pre-spiced and will throw off the balance.
• Don’t flatten the dough mounds before baking. These need to stay tall to keep their cakey lift.
• For a crisper bottom, switch to a dark metal sheet. Light-colored sheets give a softer, paler base.

Variations

• Add 1 teaspoon of cinnamon and ½ teaspoon of nutmeg to push this toward classic pumpkin spice territory.
• Swap raisins for dried cranberries for a tart pop against the chocolate.
• Substitute white chocolate chips for bittersweet if you want a sweeter, more dessert-forward bite.