I’m finally resurfacing from the chaotic baking season of Mid-Autumn Festival, where I baked so many mooncakes and filmed so many mooncake-making tutorials for Instagram and Tiktok. It’s hard to find baking inspiration after a big holiday because I go 110% leading up to the holiday and I’m out of both motivation and unsalted butter shortly after the holiday passes. I’m back now and I have been recipe testing lots of pumpkin things behind the scenes as well as working on a lot of fall cookie decorating ideas that I can’t wait to share with you. I’m still contemplating whether I’m going to do a haunted gingerbread house this year (because I don’t think I can top last year’s gingerbread pumpkin stand) — semi stay tuned? For now I’m excited to share a pumpkin sugar cookie recipe that is versatile for many different types of bakes during the fall season. I’ve used it to make these iced sugar cookie ghosts and pumpkins as well as a pumpkin sandwich cookie with nutella cheesecake filling (!!) that I will be sharing soon.
This pumpkin sugar cookie recipe is great for making cut-out cookies with your favourite cookie cutter. The dough comes together really easily and you don’t need a mixer to make it. It doesn’t spread much but I do recommend chilling your cookie cutouts before baking to make sure the cookies retain their shape as much as possible.
Pumpkin Cut-Out Sugar Cookies
Ingredients
Pumpkin Cut-Out Sugar Cookies
- 70 g (1/4 cup) pumpkin purée
- 150 g (2/3 cup) unsalted butter, room temperature
- 50 g (1/4 cup) granulated sugar
- 2 tsp vanilla
- 160 g (1 1/3 cup) all-purpose flour
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1/4 tsp ground ginger
- 1/8 tsp ground nutmeg
- 1/8 tsp ground cloves
Royal Icing
- 240 g (2 cups) icing sugar
- 4 – 5 tbsp water
- 1 1/2 tbsp meringue powder
Instructions
Pumpkin Cut-Out Sugar Cookies
- Preheat oven to 350F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Set aside.
- Between two sheets of paper tower, pat pumpkin purée dry. Removing the excess moisture will allow the cookies to crisp up more. After patting dry the initial 70g of pumpkin will reduce down to around 50g.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream together on medium speed butter and granulated sugar, about 1 minute.
- Add pumpkin purée and vanilla to the butter-sugar mixture and mix until smooth.
- In a bowl, whisk together flour, spices, and salt. Add to the mixing bowl and mix on low speed until just combined, about 30 seconds
- Lay down a piece of parchment paper and transfer dough to the parchment.
- Lay a second piece of parchment over the dough and roll out dough to 1/4-inch in thickness. (Using two pieces of parchment eliminates the need to add extra flour to the dough)
- If the dough is too soft or is sticking to the parchment paper at this point, transfer the rolled out dough to firm up in the refrigerator for 15 minutes.
- Using cookie cutters of choice, stamp cut outs.
- Transfer the cut outs to the lined baking sheet. Transfer baking sheet to refrigerator or freezer to chill cut outs until firm — this will prevent spreading.
- Bake for 13 – 15 minutes, until edges the bottom of each cookie is a golden brown.
- Wait 10 minutes before transferring cookies to a wire rack to cool completely.
Royal Icing
- Combine icing sugar, meringue powder, and water in a large bowl. Using a hand mixer or a stand mixer fitted with a whisk attachment, beat icing ingredients together first on low speed before gradually increasing to high speed for 1 – 2 minutes. If the icing too thick, beat in more water 1 tablespoon at a time. If royal icing is too thin, continue beating it to introduce more air OR add more icing sugar.
- Colour royal icing with food colouring of choice and transfer the coloured icing to piping bags.
Assembly
- Transfer royal icing to a shallow bowl or plate.
- Dip cooled sugar cookies into the royal icing and allow any excess to drip off.
- Before the icing dries, dip the cookie into a shallow bowl of coarse sanding sugar.
- Allow icing to dry for 10 – 15 minutes and use coloured royal icing to decorate the face.
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