Fall is one of the best times to make this Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe along with a Pumpkin Latte from your fav coffee shop (or make your own). Plus, this recipe is about as easy as you can get because you'll use a boxed spicy cake mix.
It just doesn't get any easier than this 6 ingredient Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe.
As kids the only pumpkin flavored sweets we had in the fall were pumpkin pies or pumpkin bars topped with cream cheese frosting. These pumpkin cookies add another option, and they're cuter, too!
What makes this super easy is that you do NOT need an electric mixer. Just use a whisk or spatula to mix the wet ingredients and a spatula to combine the dry ingredients until well mixed. The cookie dough will be somewhat sticky, but if you let it sit for about 5 minutes after you’ve mixed it all, it will be a little thicker.
These are such cute little cookies since I bake them in a mini-muffin pan, a regular pan or just on a parchment paper lined baking sheet. You’ll bake them just a little less time in the mini-muffin tin. They are so cute!
These are so easy to make, even the kids can help! No electric mixer, just arm-power.
Frost them with the pumpkin flavored cream cheese frosting after the cookies have completely cooled. What a full pumpkin flavor!
Preheat your oven to 350F degrees.
Choose and prep your baking pans:
- I like to use a 24-cup mini muffin pan. The scooped dough fits just right and they turn out like little mini-pumpkin cakes. It makes about 40 cute little mini pumpkin cookies. But I butter each cup with a pastry brush before putting the dough in each partition.
- I have also used a 12-cup muffin pan, making about 24 cakey pumpkin cookies. Again, I brush butter into each cup partition.
- For cookies that spread a little more, I’ve also used a parchment paper lined cookie sheet to make about 40 small cookies.
Gather up your 6 Cookie Ingredients:
1 Spicy Cake Mix, 15 oz size (any close size will do, 15.25 or 15.50 oz)
15 oz Pumpkin puree can, do NOT use pumpkin pie filling
2 Eggs
1 t Pumpkin pie spice mixture*
1 C Chocolate chips, dark or semi-sweet
1/3 C Chocolate chips, mini dark or semi-sweet for garnish
12 Pecans to make the pumpkin handles
*I don’t like overpaying for pumpkin pie spice since I already have all of the spices included in that mixture in my spice cabinet. I mix up some ground spices, including nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, ginger and allspice to make my pumpkin pie spice mix. If I remember right, the last time I mixed it, I included a teaspoon of each, but only a ¼ teaspoon of the cloves and ginger in my mixture.
Pull together the cream cheese frosting Ingredients:
8 oz Cream cheese (use the brick, not the spread)
¼ C Butter, room temperature, not melted
2 t Vanilla extract
1 t Pumpkin pie spice mix*
4 ½ C Powdered sugar
Mix up your Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookie dough:
- In a large mixing bowl, combine the pumpkin puree and eggs until well combined. Set aside.
- Sift the cake mix and spices into the wet mixture and stir well until all the dry is combined.
- Stir in 1 cup of the chocolate chips. I like to use dark chocolate chips because they don’t get lost with the strong pumpkin flavor.
- Let set 5 minutes so the dough thickens a little.
Baking the cookies:
- Using a 2-tablespoon cookie scoop your cookie dough into or onto the baking pan of your choice as explained above.
- Top each cookie with 2-3 additional chocolate chips.
- Bake at 350F degrees for 10-13 minutes. I always check them at the 9-minute mark and rotate my pans 180 degrees…my oven bakes hotter on one side than the other.
- I lightly press the top of some of the cookies. If the dough springs back they are done. If they indent and do not recover, I a minute or more to the baking time.
- Cool on the pans for a couple minutes before transferring them to the cooling rack.
- Refrigerate them before frosting. You won’t want the cream cheese frosting to melt and run off the sides.
- These cookies will be just a little cakey, which is the way I LOVE them!
Frost the Cookies:
- These cookies are delicious with the pumpkin flavored cream cheese frosting.
- Just frost them with an offset spatula.
- Or, color some of the frosting with orange gel food coloring. Pipe a cute little orange pumpkin on top of each cookie.
- Then stick a sliver of a pecan or almond in the top to replicate a pumpkin stem. Don't have any pecans or almonds on hand? Then snap a small pretzel stick in half for the pumpkin stem.
Serve right away or store in an airtight container:
- These can be stored in the refrigerator in an airtight container.
- If the weather is cooler, they can be stored for a day in an airtight container on the counter.
- For freezing, I freeze the baked cookies, then thaw and frost them the day I want to serve them.
With just a few ingredients you can be the hero at work or at your Halloween party with these easy to make Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies with Cream Cheesecake Frosting. Garnish with chocolate chips or even pumpkin candies. However you decorate them, “Bake your own Memories!”
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