Pumpkin-Chocolate Chip Cookies

Pumpkin-Chocolate Chip cookies...what a great combination of flavors.  Chocolate, which is always good, and pumpkin, which is delicious, healthy, and adds moisture to baked goods.  Of course, we'll all be sick of canned pumpkin puree before Thanksgiving's requisite pie, but for now it's good stuff.

This was my second time making these cookies.  Last year I baked them for a gathering of friends, and they got the thumbs up.  This year, not so much.  The problem is that the recipe leaves some room for interpretation, and this year I interpreted wrongly.  The original recipe says to cream the first five ingredients (I've revised the recipe here so your cookies won't come out like mine).  Creaming butter, sugar, vanilla, egg, and pumpkin puree just does not work.  The pumpkin makes the mixture too goopy, which means clumps of un-whipped butter throughout.  The result were cookies with a slightly-off texture.

Random note:  Normally I would recommend using organic versions of ingredients if you can, but I found that the Trader Joe's organic pumpkin puree that I used this year wasn't very good.  It's more brown than orange, which makes for blah-looking cookies.  Also--and this is my strange perspective--the flavor was slightly off with the organic stuff, too.  It was just a little too nutty and strong.  In this case, apparently I like the bland regular pumpkin.

The only other thing worth mentioning is this:  splurge on good-quality chocolate chips.  That doesn't mean you need to special-order Valrhona.  Supermarket 60% cacao bittersweet Ghirardelli will do the job admirably.  Pumpkin-Chocolate chip cookies are fine and  dandy with Hershey's, but they are great with Ghirardelli!  (The same goes for chocolate chip pancakes, by the way.)

Here's the adapted recipe:

Pumpkin-Chocolate Chip Cookies

1 c butter

1 c sugar

1 egg

1 t vanilla

1 c pumpkin puree

2 1/2 c all-purpose flour

1 t cinnamon

1 t baking powder

1 1/2 t salt

1 t baking soda

1 bag good-quality chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  Line two large baking sheets with non-stick mats (such as made-of-awesome Silpat) or parchment lightly coated with baking spray.

Cream together butter and sugar until light and fluffy.  Add the egg, vanilla, and pumpkin; mix well.  Add the remaining ingredients and blend just until combined.

Drop by the tablespoon-ful onto the cookie sheets, 1-2" apart.  (You may have batter left over.)  Bake for about 10 minutes, or until cookies are just set. Repeat if you have more batter to use.  Let cookies cool on wire racks, then you can move them into baggies or plastic-wrapped plates for storage.  They will last several days.

(Original recipe source unknown.)