Pumpkin and spice and everything nice

Tonight I had a quiet house. I had so many choices of how to spend my time and I decided to bake.

You know my love for science makes me love baking in a special way; mix a lot of things together and they make something entirely different. A lot of cooking is not really cooking, in my book. It's assembling. A recipe for a salad, for instance, is not cooking. It is just gathering things into one yummy space. The ingredients don't change one another and interact and explode into something unexpected.

But baking. Baking has a special place in my heart because there is specific, measurable, predictable science involved. (Did you know that about me?) Flour, eggs, butter and sugar make magical things happen. And that magic has a way of trickling from the mouth to the heart.

Tonight, while listening to the Reed Life mixpod over and over, I made my favorite fall treat, Pumpkin-Chocolate Chip cookies. And you'll be so proud. I even took photos along the way. And even more surprising is that I even changed the recipe a bit, and it turned out even better. Whew, have you recovered from the shock of my spontaneity?

This recipe is doubled from the original because they are so yummy and I like to give some away.
It makes 50 large cookies.
Oven @ 350.

Here are the goods. BTW, I always use whole wheat flour and no one knows. You can't even tell the difference in my best-ever macroons.

In a large bowl, mix together (in a mixer or with a handheld):
2 t vanilla
2 C canned pumpkin
2 C sugar
2 eggs
3 sticks of butter

(works best in a cutie apron)

In a small bowl, mix together:
4 C flour
2 t salt
2 t baking powder
2 t baking soda
2 t cinnamon
1/2 t nutmeg

You know the drill. Add the dry, in batches, to the wet.



As if the batter is not beautiful enough already, stir in a whole bag of chocolate chips. Yea.



Here is my favorite baking friend.



He loves uniformity like I do. You'd probably never have one of his kind, huh? You'd probably take pictures at the sea of misshapen, irregular cookie shapes coming out of your oven and write something inspiring about them, like how they represent something about humanity.

But I say, "Cookies, if you don't look like the others, I will eat you at once so you won't be on my pretty plate."

So above is the original recipe. But this time, I added 1 C oats in place of one of the cups of flour, since I love oats in cookies. And the oats gave a little more structure to the fragile cake-like texture that is caused by the pumpkin.  You should try it. In fact, next time, I'll do 2 C oats, 2 C flour.

Bake for about 15 minutes per batch.
Then, magic.



And dinner. Then breakfast tomorrow. Hey, pumpkin is a vegetable, after all.