Molasses Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

The weather's turned crisp and the leaves are growing crunchy, and while I'm no fan of the pumpkin spice craze, when I discovered frozen pumpkin in the freezer, I knew it was time for a batch of cookies. 

I found a recipe online, and then tweaked it by substituting molasses for some of the sugar, replacing a quarter of the flour with whole wheat, and pumping up the spice level. 

My beloved likes her cookies in the style of crisp English biscuits, but once in a while I indulge my predilection for the soft, cakey variety, and that's what you'll get with this recipe. The molasses provides an earthy fullness, the whole wheat offers a bit of texture, the chocolate introduces a melting quality, and you're left with a slight afternote of heat from the cayenne. A thoroughly satisfying, thoroughly fall treat.

Let me know if you like them!

INGREDIENTS

1 cup pumpkin puree

½ cup molasses

½ cup granulated sugar

½ cup oil (canola or vegetable)

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 large egg

2 teaspoons baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon cinnamon

¼ teaspoon ground cloves

¼ teaspoon all spice

¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper

½ cup whole wheat flour

1½ cups all purpose flour

½ to 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

DIRECTIONS

Combine all ingredients except the flour and chocolate chips. When well mixed, add both types of flour and continue blending. When the flour has been incorporated, stir in the chocolate chips. 

Plop by tablespoon or a smallish cookie scoop onto a parchment-lined baking sheet.

Bake at 375 degrees until tester comes out clean; around 10 to 12 minutes, depending on cookie size.

Get 'em while you still can...

Oh, the days of prepackaged chocolatey goodness are numbered!

No matter if you call them King Dons, Big Wheels, or Ding Dongs, they soon will be no more. Hostess is apparently going out of business.

Run, don't walk, to your corner store.

Fill your freezer.

Stock up while you still can.

Chocolate Nut Drops? You Decide.

This recipe is undoubtedly tasty. How can you go wrong with chocolate, walnuts, and icing?

But I have to admit, in a week in which my naughty puppy unscrewed the lid of a 1/2 full jar of dry roasted peanuts and consumed them, the picture brought to mind something else:

Go reindeer!

Post-Pompeii Souffle

Here's another souffle recipe in case you aren't in a prune mood. This one comes from New York Daily News political columnist and former WNPC president Ruth Montgomery.

She writes:

A highlight of one of the most perfect days I ever spent was this chocolate souffle. Leaving Pompeii,we traveled by car along the Amalfi Drive in Southern Italy. At dusk we reached quaint Ravello (where Greta Garbo once fled from the press for an idyllic sojourn with Leopold Stokowski). At the Hotel Caruso Belvedere, a quaint, ageless inn, we dined luxuriously in the patio with the entire bay of Salerno at our feet. This was the dessert--so superb that I wangled the recipe.

What a story! And what a dessert! So simple. Perhaps it's time for souffles to make a comeback.

Chocolate Souffle

Cherry preserves

2 eggs

1 tablespoon confectioner's sugar

1 tablespoon cocoa

Separate the eggs. Beat whites until stiff, then add the yolks and stir gently. Add the cocoa and sugar, little by little, continuing to stir gently. Place in individual buttered baking dish, on the bottom of which has been arranged a thin layer of cherry preserves. Bake in moderate oven until souffle rises, then serve at once. This serves one; increase ingreedeints according to number of servings desired.