What happens when you change the fundamentals?

If you take away the dairy and the egg, and add in pumpkin, is it still a snickerdoodle?

Would you care if it was still a delicious cookie?

Philosophic pondering aside, what happens when you want to bake some cookies but:

You want it to be dairy free
You want it to be egg free
You want it to be fall-themed
You want to use up your extra pumpkin puree
You still want it to be delicious?

I found a recipe from Sally’s Baking Addiction for a pumpkin snickerdoodle. This being a very reliable recipe source, I decided to put my skepticism at the amalgamation of the classic snickerdoodle with pumpkin, and the fact that this recipe did not contain any nuts or eggs.

If you change everything, can you still have it all?

Method

Recipe Source

As mentioned, today’s recipe inspiration was White Chocolate Pumpkin Snickerdoodles from Sally’s Baking Addiction

Allergen Modifications

Instead of butter, I used Imperial brand margarine
- When some recipes call for melted butter, I have substituted oil. This typically works well in some cakes, and as noted in previous posts, may actually help keep them moist.
- However, for cookies, oil will typically make them very crumbly. It seems that you need an option that will hold together at room temperature for the correct cookie texture.
- If you experiment with coconut oil, please let me know how it goes!
I omitted the optional white chocolate chips since I didn’t have any in my pantry.
- They can be difficult to find, but here is an option from Enjoy Life which you can order on Amazon or Vitacost. More on this decision later.
This recipe is naturally free of nuts and eggs! No need to bust out your flax.

Procedures

1. To start, the recipe author recommends blotting your pumpkin to reduce some of the moisture.

2. Next, you mix together your dry ingredients in two steps.

4. Combine the two mixtures.
Add in white chocolate chips, if you have them.
5. Chill the batter.

Roll balls of batter in cinnamon sugar, and get ready to bake!

Results

Procedure Modification

Pilot testing resulted in cookies that were reviewed as “hearty, a bit dense.”

Since this was not necessarily what we were looking for, I wanted to improve the texture and make them feel a little more decadent.

Therefore, I baked the rest, omitting the cinnamon sugar. Then, once the cookies were cooled, I coated them in a glaze of powdered sugar and water. They needed to appeal to the sophisticated taste buds of a 20-month-old.

Here are some pictures of the unfrosted cookies. Sorry, I was in a rush!

Conclusions

Opening up our minds to expanded definitions of things like snickerdoodles can be a good thing. However, in this case, I don’t think we ended up with snickerdoodles. But we did end up with delicious, allergen-friendly cookies that made a certain 20-month-old very happy.

With some slight modifications, these pumpkin cookies hit all of our marks. They were:

Dairy-free
Egg-free
Nut-free
Fall themed
Uses up extra pumpkin puree
And tasty!

How to make today amazing: Eat a pumpkin cookie!

Pumpkin Snickerdoodles - Dairy-, Nut-, and Egg-Free