sunday pumpkin spice cookies.

On Sunday I was feeling motivated to whip up some cookies.  For two reasons:  1)  I wanted the apartment to smell like Fall.  2)  I thought the boyfriend could use a treat while football was on.

Okay--reason #3:  It could give me something productive to do rather than waste the afternoon away on Pinterest.

They were so simple to make.  I took a basic vanilla cookie recipe I made up and added pumpkin pie spices.  The recipe here makes about 15 but could make more depending on the size you roll up.


ingredients
8 ounces (1 cup) unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 large egg yolks
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract (I didn't have any left and so I used French Vanilla creamer--the lactose free kind that you add to your coffee!)
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon coarse salt
3 teaspoons of pumpkin pie spice (I used the pre-made stuff because I was lazy :D)

**To make your own pumpkin pie spice all you need is: ginger, allspice, cinnamon, nutmeg, and sugar. I own all of these ingredients and yet I still own the pre-mixed kind too.


directions

For the dough:  Cream butter and sugar with a mixer (or you could be old school like me and use a fork.. it is rare to find me with a mixer in hand) until it is pale and fluffy.  Add your egg yolks and whatever vanilla flavoured goodness you have in your kitchen.  Beat in the flour, salt, and spices until everything is nicely mixed up.  Cover and throw it in the fridge for an hour.  (The dough will keep for a day in the fridge and it also freezes for a month quite nicely.)

The baking part:  Preheat the oven to 350.  Roll balls using a teaspoon or two for each cookie.  Or do it like I do and just eyeball the heck out of every one.  They don't have to be perfect they just have to be delicious.  Place them 1 inch apart on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper or if you have the Pampered Chef bar pan you won't need to line it.  Press a thumbprint into each cookie.  Bake for about ten minutes.  Check on the cookies and repress the thumbprints with the handle end of a spoon if they've fluffed up.  

You can get creative and fill the thumbprints with whatever you'd like.  I had a dark chocolate bar from Ikea in the fridge and so I decided to break it up into pieces.  After that I put the cookies back into the oven for another 6-8 minutes.  

Whipped cream might have been a fun option for the thumbprints, cinnamon icing.  You can definitely get creative with the middles of these cookies.  If you're American I would recommend going out and buying Hershey Pumpkin Spice Kisses and using those--take the cookies out of the oven, place them on a wire cooling rack and place a kiss in each thumbprint.  They will melt with the heat of the cookie but if you put them in the fridge after they've cooled the Kisses will harden again.