My kids love to celebrate the holidays with fun bakery treats. They especially love to help me bake cookies for the holidays. Halloween and Thanksgiving are no exceptions. Pumpkin cookies are perfect for any time in October and November and this cookie recipe will be fun to make, not to mention fun to eat! The pumpkin cookies themselves are sugar cookies… who doesn’t love a fun homemade sugar cookie? Especially one covered in orange icing?
Try this Pumpkin Sugar Cookie Recipe for a fun fall treat!
Pumpkin Sugar Cookie Recipe
Cookie Ingredients:
5 C flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 1/2 C soft unsalted butter
2 C granulated sugar
4 eggs
Cookie Directions:
- Cream the soft butter with the sugar until the combination is smooth, not grainy to the touch in a mixing bowl.
-Add all 4 eggs at one time…Continue to mix. -Add the vanilla. Continue mixing.
-Sift the four, baking powder, and salt together.
-Add the dry mixture to the wet mixture.
-Continue mixing to make sure all ingredients are thoroughly blended.
-Make the dough into a ball, wrap it in cling wrap completely covering the entire dough ball.
-Put in the refrigerator for about 6 hours or overnight. Check to see if the dough is firm.
-Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
-Pull the cookie dough out of the refrigerator and sit it out to soften up a bit.
– Put flour out on the wood cutting board, rub flour on the rolling pin, and work some flour into the batter.
-Roll the dough out on the cutting board and using your Pumpkin cookie cutter begin to make your cookies.
-Line the cookie sheet with parchment paper.
-Using a metal spatula move the cut cookie to the parchment-lined cookie sheet.
-Bake at 325 degrees for 8 minutes. Check to see if the cookie is thoroughly baked.
-Take the cookies off of the cookie sheet and put on a wire rack to cool completely. (About 10 minutes).
Royal Icing
Icing Ingredients:
2 egg whites
1 C powder sugar
1/2 tsp cream of tartar
Orange, brown, green gel food coloring
(For these cookies you may have to make two bowls of icing).
Icing Directions:
- Combine all ingredients in a mixing bowl mixing on medium speed for 4 minutes. (except your food coloring)
- If icing is not stiff enough add 1/4 C powder sugar.
- Leave icing in a large bowl. Take out 3 bowls, put 1/4 C of icing in two bowls, and the rest of the
icing in the third bowl. - Bowl #1, add several drops of brown gel food coloring stirring well until all of the colors is blended. Bowl #2, add several drops of green gel food coloring stirring well until all of the colors is blended.
– As for the largest amount of icing add several drops of orange gel food coloring in the bowl of icing … stir well to mix the color. - Spoon each of the icings into individual frosting bags with a #5 tip…. twist the open end of the bag to push the icing to the tip.
How to Decorate the Pumpkins
You don’t have to be a pro to decorate these pumpkin cookies, but you’ll need the right tools.
-First step for each of the pumpkin cookies is to outline it in orange except for the stem and leaf.
-Allow the orange outline at least 30 seconds to dry before filling the body of the cookie in with the other orange icing*. After outlining all of the pumpkin cookies you can push some the remaining icing into a bowl and add the 1 tsp of water and mix well to get the right consistency. Use a butter knife to spread it from the outlined part inwards to the center.
-Outline the stem with brown icing on all of the same pumpkin cookies, fill them in with the thinner icing.
-Outline the green leaf with the green icing on all of the same pumpkin cookies, fill them in with the thinner icing. (Leave some of the green icing in the frosting bag for additional use.)
-Use the frosting bag with orange icing and a small tip to make the four half center markings on the pumpkin. Allow these lines to dry before adding the green lines.
-Use the frosting bag with the green icing and a small tip to add the additional connected circles coming down from the green leaf.
-Set these aside and allow to completely dry for about 4 hours.
