Gluten Free Pumpkin Cookies

Fall is here. One of my favorite seasons! The leaves have changed from bright red to a vibrant yellow and orange. The temperature can’t make up it’s mind. It’s either really windy and cold or hot. Pumpkins spread from jack o lanterns to pumpkin pie to savory pumpkin spice soup. I have already started listening to Christmas music. I can’t help but want to feel that special spirit of Christmas earlier and earlier each year. It feels like one big wonderful holiday season. It doesn’t help that this time around I have an almost two year old! I want to start cooking and decorating and shopping! I am getting caught in a habit of taking him to toy stores to let him play and I end up just falling in love with all the fun things out there. He gets so excited to show me everything. I’m anticipating Christmas morning, when I get to see his sweet little face light up.

Ok I’m getting too carried away here… October flew by and Halloween was last week! What did you dress up as? Did you take your kiddies trick or treating? I feel so blessed to be a stay at home mom. I was able to take Kaden to the pumpkin patch several times last month! It was a blast because he’s at that age where everything is new and exciting. I was so amazed to see him hop on the pony and totally enjoy it! He loved feeding the little goats too.

Well, in an effort to stay somewhat healthy during the holidays this year, we made these delicious pumpkin cookies. Although they aren’t 100% healthy, we cut the butter down quite a bit and did our best! Sometimes it is hard to make recipe’s healthy and still have them taste good. Throwing in the gluten free factor is a whole other ball game. Usually, in order to make up for the yummy texture and taste of gluten, gluten free recipes have to include more fats and sugars. So making a healthified gluten free treat and still have it taste super good can be tricky!

Well we made two different types of pumpkin cookies this year- each to die for! We loved them each for different reasons.

The first is more of a traditional pumpkin cookie.The texture is comparable to a regular gluten filled cookie. We still tried to cut out as much of the butter as possible, and lessen the sugar, but they were so good! It also tastes very pumpkiny.

(Sorry this recipe is not formatted as normal, our plugin only allows us to do one recipe per post, bummer)

Gluten Free Pumpkin Cookies
Author: Gluten Free Anonymous

Ingredients:

Bowl 1

1. 1 1/4 C pumpkin
2. 1/2 C maple syrup
3. 1/3 C butter
4. 1 egg (We add 1 extra egg when we 3X the recipe)
5. 2 tsp vanilla

Bowl 2

1. 2 C flour (we use Pamela’s GF flour)
2. 1 tsp cinnamon
3. 1/2 tsp baking soda
4. 1/2 tsp salt
5. 1/2 tsp nutmeg

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 375°.
2. Combine flour, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt; set aside.
3. In a medium bowl, cream together butter & maple syrup.
4. Add pumpkin, egg, and vanilla to butter mixture, and beat until creamy.
5. Mix in dry ingredients until incorporated.
6. Add as many chocolate chips as you desire!
7. Drop on cookie sheet by tablespoonfuls, flatten slightly.
8. Bake for 8-10 minutes in the preheated oven.

The second is even healthier than the first. The texture is a bit more dense and less airy. The pumpkin flavor is not as strong but the spices are bolder. This one was my favorite. The recipe calls for 2 1/2 cups all purpose flour but we divided it up into 4 different flours – buckwheat, oat, almond & all purpose flour. I could NOT stop eating them. Seriously. It was bad. Luckily I was in good company because the whole family couldn’t stop either. Let me just mention that Bri and I are the only gluten freebees so it was so funny to see the gluten eaters DOWN these puppies. Haha!

PS the color is darker because of the buckwheat flour, just fyi.

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