Immortal Wordsmith

This recipe makes seriously chunky pumpkin seed cookies. Depending on how long you cook them, they can either be crunchy and perfect for dunking in tea, or soft and deliciously gooey.

Pumpkin seeds are very nutritious and they’re tasty as an ingredient in many recipes so don’t even think about throwing them away. Easy pumpkin recipes like this one and my Pumpkin Cupcakes Recipe are perfect for you to do with your kids!

You Will Need…

To make 12 pumpkin seed cookies you’ll need:

• 110g butter
• 1 egg
• 120g brown sugar
• 160g plain flour
• ¼ tsp baking soda
• ¼ tsp salt
• Pinch of ground cloves
• Pinch of cinnamon
• 80g toasted pumpkin seeds
• A little vegetable oil

To cook with:

• Small frying pan
• Wooden spoon
• Large mixing bowl
• Flat baking tray
• Greaseproof paper
• Sieve

Start by toasting and weighing your pumpkin seeds after carving your pumpkin – if you have half of what’s needed for this recipe, half the other ingredients to match. If you have double the amount of seeds, double the other ingredients. Or save the remaining seeds for another recipe.

Toasting the Pumpkin Seeds

Toasting the pumpkin seeds ensures they are nice and crunchy for your cookies! You can roast the seeds straight away if you prefer, but I always find that using a frying pan is much nicer and gives you more control over how toasted the seeds are before they’re roasted down.

Wash your pumpkin seeds to remove any pumpkin gut residue and dry them on kitchen roll. Coat them a little with the vegetable oil and toast them for 10 minutes or until they’re a light golden-brown colour.

Then spread them out on a metal baking tray, heat the oven to 180C and bake for 15 minutes. This is one of my favourite pumpkin recipes because any leftover seeds make delicious crunchy nibbles to eat while the cookies are baking. Did you know that pumpkin seeds are high in iron, zinc, potassium and magnesium?

Making the Cookie Mix

Start by creaming the butter and sugar together in the large mixing bowl with your wooden spoon. Beat them hard until they’re combined.

Add your egg and beat until light and fluffy. If you’re always getting bits of shell in your egg, start by cracking it into a glass so you can see and remove flakes of shell before adding it to the mix.

Put your sieve over the large mixing bowl and sieve in the flour then add in the spices, salt and baking soda, ensuring there are no lumps.

Mix in the flour mixture quickly; don’t over mix, stop once it’s combined nicely. The mixture should still be soft and gooey, rather than a firm dough. Add a small splash of milk to get to this consistency if need be.

Then tip in your pumpkin seeds and mix together until you have a yummy, chunky mix that should smell amazing!

Baking the Pumpkin Seed Cookies

You can use a special cookie batter scooper to get uniform size cookies, or just use an ice-cream scoop or large spoon.

Line your baking tray with the greaseproof paper and start to put the cookies on the tray. They can spread so try to keep them several centimetres away from one another – six per tray is fine, you can do two lots.

Bake in the oven for 10 minutes at 190C (180C if you’re using a fan oven). Check them at the 10-minute mark, if they’re yummy and golden brown in appearance, take them out. If not, give them two or three minutes longer. These cookies are delicious when they’re gooey and soft with the crunch from the pumpkin seeds, so try not to overcook them.

Cooling the Pumpkin Seed Cookies

Once you’ve taken your cookies out of the oven, just leave them to cool on the tray for a couple minutes while you sort out the cooling rack. Then carefully using a spatula, move the cookies from the tray to the cooling rack.

These are so yummy you’ll struggle to resist trying one while they’re still warm! Once completely cool, move them to an airtight container and store for up to a week… if they last that long. Enjoy with a glass of milk on Halloween, or as a sumptuous dessert served warm with a scoop of vanilla ice-cream!