Ingredients
Pumpkin Spiced Cookies
- 4 1/4 cups all-purpose flour*, plus more for dusting work surface
- 2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 cup unsalted butter, softened slightly
- 1 cup Dixie Crystals Extra Fine Granulated Sugar
- 1/2 cup packed Dixie Crystals Light Brown Sugar
- 2 large eggs
- 1/4 cup pumpkin puree
Maple Royal Icing
- 1/4 cup room temperature water, plus more as needed
- 1/4 cup pure maple syrup, room temperature
- 2 1/2 tablespoons meringue powder
- 4 cups Dixie Crystals Confectioners Powdered Sugar
- Brown, green, and orange food coloring
*Spoon & Sweep method: Use a spoon to fill measuring cup with flour until required amount is obtained. Scooping measuring cup directly into flour bag will firmly pack flour resulting in too much flour required for recipe.
Directions
- For cookies, preheat oven to 350°F.
- Mix flour, pumpkin pie spice, salt, and baking powder together in a bowl. Set aside.
- Cream butter, granulated sugar, and light brown sugar until light and fluffy.
- Mix in eggs and beat until well combined.
- Add pumpkin puree and beat until blended.
- Stir in flour mixture just until incorporated.
- Spoon cookie dough into a large zip top bag and seal or wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least one hour.
- Dust your work surface with flour. If dough feels sticky, gently knead in a bit more flour until dough is smooth.
- Divide cookie dough into thirds and roll one third of the dough out to about 1/8-inch thickness.
- Cut using a 3-inch pumpkin cookie cutter. Repeat, rolling out all the dough to cut out about 44 pumpkin cookies.
- Place cut-outs on parchment paper lined baking sheets.
- Chill cookie dough cut-outs in refrigerator for 15 minutes before baking for 10-12 minutes until the tops look dry and the edges are set.
- Remove cookies from oven, place on a cooling rack and allow to cool completely.
- For Maple Royal Icing, blend together the water, maple syrup, and meringue powder.
- Pour into a large mixing bowl.
- Sift powdered sugar over top.
- Stir until well combined, then beat on medium speed using an electric mixer until glossy and smooth, 2-3 minutes.
- Remove 3 tablespoons of royal icing and color it using brown food coloring.
- Remove 3 tablespoons of royal icing and color it using green food coloring.
- Color remaining royal icing using orange food coloring. For a true pumpkin color you can add a drop or two of brown coloring.
- Add more water, a few drops at a time to thin frosting out so that you can pipe it onto cookies and it will hold its shape. When you take a spoonful of the frosting out of the bowl and allow it to drop in ribbons into the bowl of frosting the ribbons should take about 18-20 seconds to flatten out into the frosting. It’s always best to add the food coloring before thinning the icing with more water.
- Spoon colored icing into individual pastry bags fitted with #1 (green) and #2 or #3 (brown and orange) pastry tips.
- You can pipe orange icing all over round part of cookie or you can give cookies some dimension by piping frosting into curved sections on the cookie. To do so, pipe on one orange oval in center of each cookie, then pipe two quarter moon sections on either side of cookie leaving space in between center and edges. Repeat with all the other cookies.
- Once that icing has dried for about 15 minutes, you can pipe on the remaining two oval/moon shaped portions of the pumpkin. Allow the wet icing to touch the edges of the dried icing to give your cookies a dimensional look.
- Use brown icing to pipe on stems. Then use green icing to pipe on leaves and vines, if desired.
- Allow cookies to dry at room temperature overnight before stacking them.
- To speed up drying process you can place cookies in front of a gentle (and free of lint) fan.
- Any remaining icing can be covered and stored in the refrigerator for other projects.
Dixie Crystals Insight
Recipe created for Dixie Crystals by Beth Jackson Klosterboer @Hungry Happenings.