Pumpkin Cookies

One blessing-curse in my life is the fact that vending machines on campus sell cookies made by the Alternative Baking Company.  These are usually quite delicious cookies, made without anything weird in them.  Of course, they are enormous, such that one cookie is really five or so.  Anyway, I recently had one such pumpkin spice cookie and thought, I can do that; why did I just pay $2 for such a cookie?

And here we are.  The problem with pumpkin cookies seems to be their tendency to edge towards the pumpkin muffin or pumpkin bread.  What if you actually want a cookie?  This was a problem in the case of the Marbled Pumpkin-Chocolate Cookies this fall.  And here, again, I ended up with tasty little bites of pumpkin bread.  I thought that using butter would help--and the cookies were a bit crisp when they first came out--but after sitting a few hours they are back to bread.  Perhaps to make a really cookie-like pumpkin cookie, you need to use a ton more butter and sugar.  Anyway, the spices are the same as in my favorite Pumpkin Bread recipe, so it's still tasty.  Edit 10/19/10: Mystery solved: for a more cookieish pumpkin cookie, see the Sell Your Soul Pumpkin Cookies from VCIYCJ.

Pumpkin Cookies

Ingredients

1/2 c earth balance

1 c sugar

1 c pumpkin (canned)

1 tsp vanilla extract

*

1 1/2 c white flour

1/2 c whole wheat flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp cloves

1/2 tsp allspice

1/2 tsp salt

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350*. Combine earth balance, sugar, pumpkin, and vanilla in one bowl; combine the other ingredients in another bowl.

Add dry to wet. Mix adequately. Use spoons to drop little blobs on a coookie sheet lined with parchment paper.

Bake for 13-16 minutes, until lightly browned.   Makes about 3 dozen.