As promised, I decided to make another pumpkin-themed cookie this week, and this time it was the Pumpkin Spice Cookie.
This is actually one of the easiest recipes to make, but it does require some planning ahead, as you need an egg at room temperature. No butter or sugar is needed, since the yellow cake mix makes up for it.
For this recipe, you’ll need three bowls: a small, medium, and large bowl. The large bowl will consist of your dry ingredients: yellow cake mix, quick cooking oats, and pumpkin pie spice. The medium bowl will have the wet ingredients: pumpkin, the egg, and canola oil. The small bowl will have your powdered sugar, orange juice, and orange zest.
There’s not really that much to the recipe. The most time consuming part of making this recipe is probably making the frosting for the cookies, since I had to freshly squeeze orange juice and then zested them for the frosting.
As long as you have the ingredients ahead of time, this is a very simple recipe to make. Plus, the yellow cake mix is pretty cheap at most grocery stores, so it’s not like it’s a stupidly expensive specialty ingredient.
This recipe calls for the use of our trusty 1.5Tbsp Oxo cookie scoop, that never lets us down, to scoop the balls of dough.
The only issue I had with this recipe was that you need to make sure you scoop the dough, place it on a cookie sheet coated in cooking spray, and flatten the cookies. Because the cookies were pretty sticky, it’s hard to get a large cookie for this.
I actually made this recipe twice because I originally made this recipe with the cookie dough balls on a cookie sheet covered with a sheet of parchment paper, but they felt way too soft for me. I remade them the next day and put them on the cookie sheets coated with cooking spray, and it made a marginal difference. It made the cookies a little more firm since you’re cooking the cookies directly on the aluminum cookie sheets.
The cookies were baked in the oven on aluminum cookie sheets for 23 minutes. Then they were cooled on racks, and then frosted.
The frosting was pretty easy to make, as you just combine all the ingredients. I’d recommend putting in 4 tablespoons of frosting since with 3, it’s pretty thick and hard to spread.
Overall, I’d say this is a recipe I recommend for the fall season, and they’re going to be a delight for anyone you make them for.
Ingredients:
- 1 package yellow cake mix (regular size)
- 1/2 cup quick-cooking oats
- 2 to 2-1/2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice
- 1 can (15 ounces) solid-pack pumpkin
- 1 large egg, room temperature
- 2 tablespoons canola oil
Frosting:
- 3 cups confectioners’ sugar
- 1 teaspoon grated orange zest
- 3 to 4 tablespoons orange juice
Directions:
- Preheat oven to 350°.
- Combine cake mix, oats and pie spice.
- In another bowl, beat pumpkin, egg and oil. Stir into dry ingredients just until moistened.
- Drop by 2 tablespoonfuls onto baking sheets coated with cooking spray; flatten with the back of a spoon. Bake until edges are golden brown, 18-20 minutes. Remove to wire racks to cool.
- For frosting, combine confectioners’ sugar, orange zest and enough orange juice to achieve desired consistency.
- Spread over cooled cookies.
Michael Makes 