What’s the appropriate snack to eat when you’re getting the family ready for Halloween?
Great Pumpkin cookies, of course!
- 1 1/2 cups brown sugar, packed
- 1/2 cup shortening
- 2 eggs
- 1 lb. can pumpkin
- 2 3/4 cups flour, sifted
- 1 tablespoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon ginger
- 1 cup raisins
- 1 cup pecans, chopped
- Pre-heat oven to 400°.
- Mix sugar, shortening, eggs, and pumpkin thoroughly in a large bowl.
- Sift dry ingredients and add to pumpkin mixture. Blend well. Add raisins and pecans.
- Drop batter by teaspoonsful on ungreased baking sheets.
- Bake 12 to 15 minutes or until lightly browned. Remove from oven, and lift off with a pancake turner.
It’s even more appropriate because our youngest is always bringing along his blanket. (Considering he also doesn’t want to dress up in costumes, maybe I’ll just let him carry the blanket and claim he’s Linus. GENIUS.)
Canned pumpkin is wonderful stuff. And it’s incredibly good for you. I mean, adding so much sugar and shortening probably reduces that somewhat… but there are still vitamins and fiber. Yay!
Mixing the shortening directly with liquid ingredients (eggs, and in this case, pumpkin) is never a good idea. All those little pale blobs are shortening, and it took many minutes of mixing to get them to shrink enough that I’d consider it all incorporated. It’s faster to cream fat and sugar, and then add other liquid stuff (slowly).
But it did end up OK, especially after the flour was put in, and then we added plenty of raisins and pecans.
The consistency of this was fairly liquid — not as dense as typical cookie dough, more like a thick cake or quickbread.
Oh look, a pumpkin guest came to the tasting this week!
“Ooooh, these are yummy.”
“Cool! Now let’s carve your friend…”
Verdict: Great! Pumpkiny!
From the tasting notes:
Pumpkin-based desserts = yummy. These had a soft consistency almost more like muffins or cake, but were bite-size like cookies. Nice and flavorful. Once again, well-hidden raisins were accepted by the picky eater.
Holy–I HAD this cookbook! It was one of many old children’s books my grandmother gave me when I was younger, especially because I loved anything Peanuts as a kid! But I never made anything from it. Tragic. But then you posted this and I REMEMBERED.
These cookies look absolutely delightful. I may need to whip up my own batch…
They look scrumptious. Thank you so much for sharing.
I had this cookbook way back when and we used to make this recipe! There was another recipe in mine that was weird (it was a baked carrot casserole) but we loved, “Miss Othmar’s Carrots Everybody Likes”. I’ve looked and looked but my book must have been a different edition than others I’ve found because every book I’ve seen doesn’t have that recipe in it.
I remember getting that book in 2nd grade, (St. Bernards Elementary, North Kingston, RI). I still remember the French fry recipe from it. Lots of good recipes in that one! Wish I still had it. Guess I’ll have to do some antique store crawling.
Just tried this recipe today! It made the house smell lovely, although it was a little bland. But all my boys (son, dog and grandpa) loved it. I think that I am going to change it up next time. I will try adding real maple syrup, and a little vanilla.