If you are a pumpkin fan, you are going to fall in love with these giant, soft pumpkin cookies. Loaded with rich butterscotch chips and seasonal spices; these cakey, but not dry spiced pumpkin cookies are bursting with the flavors of fall and the holidays in every bite. Plus they take less than 15 minutes to get in the oven.
Place your rack in the middle of the oven, preheating oven to 325 degrees F. Line your baking sheets with parchment paper or butter the pans.
In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and pumpkin pie spice; set aside.
In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment or in a large bowl with a hand mixer or whisk, beat the sugar and eggs until smooth and lightened in color, about a minute. The mixture should be silky and thick.
With the mixer on low speed, slowly mix in the oil, then add the pumpkin, vanilla until blended.
Add the flour mixture a little at a time until incorporated. Stir or mix in butterscotch chips on low.
Using a ¼ cup ice cream or cookie scoop (see variations for smaller cookies), scoop the pumpkin cookie dough onto prepared baking sheets. Spacing the cookies about 2 ½ inches apart, I was able to get 6 giant pumpkin cookies per pan. If you want your cookies a little flatter, then using an offset spatula smooth the mounds a bit.
Bake the cookies one sheet at a time, until the tops feel firm (spring back when lightly touched) and a toothpick inserted comes out clean, about 14-16 minutes.
Cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes, then use a wide spatula and transfer cookies to a wire cooling rack to cool completely.
If desired, dust the fully cooled cookies lightly with powdered sugar.
Notes
Smaller Soft Pumpkin Cookies | use a medium cookie scoop, yielding about 24 cookies, give or take! Bake for 10-14 minutes, when touched lightly the tops should spring back. High Altitude Adjustments | This recipe works great at sea level to altitude, I bake at 5280 feet above sea level (mile high) and have made adjustments for you. Add ¼ cup additional unbleached flour. Reduce baking powder to 1 teaspoon. My cookies worked fine at the original 325 degree temperature, but you might explore baking this spiced pumpkin cookies recipe at 350 degrees for a little less time. Gluten-Free Soft Pumpkin Cookies | I recommend using a good GF AP 1-1 Flour like this one, or use half gluten-free flour and half almond or oat flour. Watch the bake time. You don’t want to overbake them!Variations:
Add a little swirl of brown sugar cream cheese frosting -- find the recipe in my Carrot Cupcake recipe.
Or go all out and make these into Pumpkin Whoopie Pies and sandwich them between this creamy maple brown sugar buttercream (found in my Oatmeal Sandwich Cookies)
Substitutions Instead of butterscotch chips, try adding an equal amount of mini chocolate chips, chocolate chunks or regular chocolate chips or a combination of the above making them a delicious pumpkin chocolate chip cookie.
The last batch I made I sent to our college son, I added some caramel bits to the batter!
I would also recommend trying white chocolate chips, peanut butter chips and even English Toffee bits!