Labor Day Pumpkin Cookies

To celebrate Labor Day, I decided to make pumpkin cookies. Apparently there is a shortage of pumpkin in the Charlotte area, so cans of pumpkin are really hard to come by. A man at a local grocery store explained to me that last year some pumpkins were diseased because of the hot weather, so they had to ship all of their cans of pumpkin back (just in case), and they haven’t gotten any new ones in stock yet.

Once upon a time, I invented this pumpkin cookie recipe, and I’m going to share it with you now. There is, however, one condition: you have to give me credit for it because I really do think I made it up. I guess you can call it a variation of the fat-free applesauce cookie recipe, but that is with applesauce and raisins … yuck (actually, they are pretty yum, but mine are better).

This is what I look like without any makeup on, wearing my favorite outfit, minutes away from getting my bake on. Did you know that I don’t always have on 8 pounds of mascara? It’s very rare, but sometimes it happens.

Tessa’s Lowfat-ish Pumpkin Cookies

¼ cup packed brown sugar

¼ cup white sugar

¾ cup pumpkin

1 cup flour

1 tsp baking powder

½ tsp salt

½ tsp ground cinnamon

1 cup old fashioned rolled oats

½ cup chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350. Stir together everything in order. Drop by rounded tablespoonfuls onto a greased cookie sheet. (They won’t grow in the oven, so make them the size that you want them). Bake for 10-12 minutes.

Please note: Do not buy the canned pumpkin pie filling (like I accidentally did today). It has sugar and spices and some kind of unhealthy syrup stuff going on, and then it’ll just mess up the taste of everything else. So get regular old pumpkin. Also, I like to buy the mini semisweet chocolate chips. Something about them being “mini” makes me feel better about adding them in. Dark chocolate chips are good too.   I almost always double the recipe, and that makes about 36 cookies.

Enjoy your cookies. And Happy Labor Day! Fall is coming … can you smell it? Oh, maybe that’s just cinnamon and pumpkin coming from my oven.