Halloween Special - Pumpkin Chocolate Chip cookies

During halloween, all shops decorate to bring out the holiday mood. I believe, the grocery shops have their own ways of doing so. They bring out a pumpkin touch to anything and everything. The pumpkins lined up in front of the shop, in different sizes and weird shapes - pumpkin pies near the deli - pumpkin cookies stacked up and what not.


This being the pumpkin season, everytime I visit a grocery store, I wondered what all I could do with pumpkins. Then came the very thought of one of our favourite cookie -  Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookie.

I 'googled' to figure out a recipe for it and after having gone through a hand full of them, came up with my own proportion of ingredients. I gave it a try and they turned out to be moist and delicious cookies. The fact is, I was looking for making only a few, but surprisingly it yielded a ton of them, with less quantity of ingredients involved.

Ingredients

1. 1 cup of light brown sugar
2. 1 cup of pumpkin puree
3. 1/2 cup of oil
4. 1 tsp of vanilla extract
5. 1 large egg
6. 2 cup of all purpose flour
7. 1 tsp of baking powder
8. 1 tsp of baking soda
9. 1/4 tsp of ginger powder
10. 1/4 tsp of cinnamon
11. 1/4 tsp of nutmeg
12. 1/2 cup of chocolate chips

Method

• Wash the pumpkin and cut it into pieces so that it fits in your pressure cooker.
• Steam it over high heat till it whistles twice. Let the cooker cool down, before you open it.
• Pumpkin would have been cooked by now. Peel of the skin and mash it with a fork.
• Take a large bowl and mix the pumpkin puree, light brown sugar and oil.
• Add the egg, vanilla extract, baking powder, baking soda, ginger powder, cinnamon powder and nutmeg powder and mix it thoroughly.
• Add the flour little by little and mix it well.
• Add the chocolate chips and mix it so that it gets evenly distributed.
• Scoop out the mixture on to a baking sheet and bake it in the oven @ 375 F for about 12-15 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.
• Yields around 20 cookies.

Tips

1. You could choose to cook your pumpkin in the oven. Place the pumpkin in a baking sheet with little water poured in it. Cover it with aluminium foil. Bake them at 200 F for about 30-40 mins or until a toothpick can be easily pricked in.
2. Pumpkin seeds are also edible. You could sprinkle some oil and salt to taste and bake them in the oven @ 350 F for about 40-45 mins. 
3. You could choose to use dark brown sugar to have the cookies darker in color.

You could store the cookies for about a week at room temperature. Post that you could also refrigerate them.

Happy Halloween!!!