This recipe is special to me. When I first started Pharmacy School, I started baking as a way to practice non-sterile compounding. The first recipe I ever made for other people was Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies. It was a hit and I actually had people requesting these cookies every time the first frost of the year happened.
Then, one of my college girlfriends was also a baker and we bounced a lot of recipes off each other. She suggested that instead of chocolate chips, we should do an orange glaze. The relationship ended, but thankfully I got to keep the recipe.
Unlike those orginal cookies, these have been spiced up with cinnamon, cloves and most importantly, ginger. The ginger really brightens up the cookie and complements the zing from the orange. When I bite into these cookies, I’m teleported back to walking through a pumpkin patch with someone you love(d) and Friendsgiving with a bunch of broke college kids whole loved Jesus, football, and each other. I hope you love these cookies as much as I do.
Ingredients
- 4 cups all-purpose flour
- 4 tsp baking powder
- 2 tsp baking soda
- 3 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1 tsp ground ginger
- 1 tsp ground nutmeg
- 1/4 tsp ground cloves
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 1 cup packed light-brown sugar
- 1 cup vegetable oil
- 2 large eggs
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 15-oz can of pumpkin puree
- 1 large navel orange
- 2-8 cups of powdered sugar
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 F. In a medium or large bowl mix together dry ingredients and set aside. In another large bowl, mix canned pumpkin, eggs, vanilla extract, sugars, and oil with a spoon until well combined.
- Add about a quarter of the dry ingredient mix to the wet ingredients and mix until well combined. Repeat with adding a quarter of the mix at a time until a thick, but still slightly runny dough forms.
- Using a large table spoon, drop the dough on a cookie sheet prepared with parchment paper. Unbaked cookies should be roughly an inch wide. Separate cookies by at least an inch as they will expand.
- Place cookies in oven to bake for 15 minutes. While they are baking, zest your orange into a small bowel and set aside. Then juice the orange. For every 1/4 of a cup of juice, add 2 cups of powdered sugar and the orange zest; stir together until an icing forms.
- Remove cookies from the oven. Using a small tablespoon, drizzle the icing on the center of the cookie and let it run as it may. The icing will harden and form a shell on the cookie. Let set for about 15 minutes to let the icing harden, then enjoy.
