The Easy Way To Give Pumpkin Spice Cookies An Extra Sweet Boost

While bloomin' apples may be the fuss free fall dessert you're craving, pumpkin cookies are an annual staple. Next to preparing easy, at-home pumpkin spice lattes, you can't truly celebrate Halloween or Thanksgiving without pumpkin bread, pumpkin muffins, and best of all, soft and chewy pumpkin cookies. However, when it comes to whipping up a batch of these quintessential seasonal desserts, you may be looking to add more sweetness to your go-to recipe.

Recipes for classic pumpkin cookies often include a mixture of flour, butter, brown sugar, pumpkin puree, and warming spices like cinnamon and nutmeg. While these confections are often perfectly chewy and contain an even amount of sweetness, dessert lovers might benefit from enhancing their recipes with one extra ingredient: chocolate chips.

Sure enough, chocolate makes everything better and including a solid cup of chocolate chips in your next batch of pumpkin cookie dough is no exception. Not only do chocolate chips become perfectly gooey when baked into homemade cookies, but more so, their underlying sweet flavor subtly contrasts the earthy taste of pureed pumpkin. Additionally, chocolate adds a certain complexity to spices like cinnamon, clove, and ginger.

Oftentimes, pumpkin is characterized as a savory ingredient rather than a sweet one. In upgrading these fall-specific desserts with chocolate, you're able to experience pumpkin's mild flavor with a touch of added decadence. That being said, the type of chocolate chips you use impacts the final flavor of these seasonal treats.

If your primary goal is to create a simple yet satisfying seasonal treat, use semi-sweet or milk chocolate chips. These varieties meld perfectly with the slightly nutty flavor of pumpkin and lead to an all-around sweeter dessert. For even sweeter cookies, use white chocolate chips. Since white chocolate doesn't contain cocoa butter solids, this variety often has a more noticeable dairy-rich, vanilla flavor.

Sure enough, instead of using white chocolate chips to make a seasonal version of classic chocolate chip cookies, add them to your favorite recipe for pumpkin snickerdoodles. Simply add white chocolate chips to your cookie dough and roll each cookie ball in cinnamon sugar before baking. You're left with a pan of perfectly spiced, ultra-sweet cookies.

On the other hand, if you want to specifically highlight the subtle sweet flavor of pureed pumpkin, use dark chocolate for an element of contrast. When it comes to the differences between dark chocolate and semi-sweet varieties, dark chocolate chips may have a more complex, bitter flavor depending on the percentage of cocoa used during production. Regardless of which variety you choose, chocolate chips are an easy way to elevate your next bowl of pumpkin spice cookies.

All that to say, for a different upgrade, add dried cranberries or golden raisins to the mix. Or, for an extra sweet finishing touch, consider topping your cookies with a creamy homemade glaze made of powdered sugar and milk.