I find a lot of joy in working around food restrictions, whether it’s for our family or for someone else. Thankfully, we don’t have any huge allergies in our family. I have a friend, though, who has a son who is allergic to eggs and peanut butter. I wanted to make them some cookies to welcome their newest baby, but as you can imagine, almost all cookies involve eggs!
While flaxseed can be substituted in some cases, I wasn’t sure how that would go with cookies, and I wanted to use up some of the canned pumpkin I had in my pantry. I had recently seen someone use pumpkin in place of eggs, so I decided to experiment. The result was better than I could have imagined, so I’m going to show you what I did so you can enjoy these delicious fall cookies!
Pumpkin Snickerdoodles (with no eggs!)
These pumpkin snickerdoodles are totally egg free, and they could also be dairy free if you chose to use oil instead of butter. I haven’t tried that, so I’m not sure how it would change the consistency, but let me know if you try!
You’ll need your basic cookie ingredients, plus pumpkin puree and cream of tartar. I tried making snickerdoodles without cream of tartar and I don’t know the science behind it, but they did not turn out. It’s worth having cream of tartar in your pantry!
First you’ll want to preheat the oven to 350. Then get your softened butter.
Cream the butter and sugar together.
Then add the pumpkin and vanilla. It turns a wonderful orange color!
Then add in the dry ingredients that you’ve already mixed together.
It will still be a nice orange-y fall color when everything is mixed in!
Now you’re going to mix together the sugar, cinnamon, and pumpkin pie spice that will form the slightly crispy outer layer of the cookie!
Now set yourself up a cookie station with the baking sheet nearby.
I used a tablespoon to form the dough into balls.
Then roll the ball in the sugar mixture.
These don’t spread out much, so you can make a lot on one pan.
Then use a flat glass bottom or measuring cup to smoosh the balls into circular forms.
Because they don’t have eggs or any other leavener in them, they don’t change much. They just bake into delicious cookie perfection!
Ingredients
- 1 cup butter, softened
- 1.5 cups sugar
- 1/2 cup pumpkin puree
- 2 tsp vanilla
- 2.75 cups flour
- 1.5 tsp cream of tartar
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tsp pumpkin pie spice
- 1/4 cup sugar
- 2 tsp cinnamon
- 2 tsp pumpkin pie spice
Directions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
- Cream the butter and and sugar together; then add the pumpkin puree and vanilla.
- Mix the flour, cream of tarter, salt, and pumpkin pie spice in a separate bowl. Add to the wet ingredients.
- In a small bowl, mix together 1/4 cup sugar, 2 tsp cinnamon, and 2 tsp pumpkin pie spice.
- Use a tablespoon measure to scoop out some of the batter and roll into a ball.
- Roll each cookie dough ball in the cinnamon sugar mixture, then place on a baking sheet.
- Before placing in the oven, use a glass or flat object to press the dough balls into a circular shape.
- Bake for about 12 minutes, then let cool on a cooling rack before removing from the pan.