Enjoy these pumpkin snickerdoodle cookies that are gooey with cozy fall flavors of pumpkin, pumpkin spice, and cinnamon sugar with the best chewy texture.
About This Recipe:
Chewy pumpkin snickerdoodle cookies are some of the best ways to enjoy pumpkin flavor, with the delicious cinnamon sugar mixture to coat the outside of the cookie dough balls. If you love a classic snickerdoodle recipe, you are going to love this pumpkin cookie recipe. It is very similar to traditional snickerdoodles rolled in a cinnamon-sugar mixture, but adds in some pumpkin purée and a little ground ginger to the chewy pumpkin snickerdoodles.
This is one of our favorite pumpkin recipes and works great if you want to make a double batch and freeze the rest for next time.
Recipe Ingredient Notes
These pumpkin snickerdoodles are so simple to make, even without needing to use pumpkin pie spice. The combination of white sugar and brown sugar makes for the best texture of the cookie, and the flavor from the dark brown sugar molasses.
Also, when you add pure pumpkin puree to classic snickerdoodles, you will get the best results for a chewy pumpkin cookie and bring your favorite cookies to the next level.
Adding ground ginger to the cinnamon-sugar coating when rolling the ball of dough before baking is essential for getting the pumpkin spice flavor.
How to Make Pumpkin Snickerdoodle Cookies:
- Preheat oven to 400°F.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer, mix unsalted butter, shortening, sugars, pumpkin, egg, flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon.
- Chill dough 30-60 minutes, then roll into 1-inch balls.
- Roll balls of dough in sugar, cinnamon, and ginger mixture.
- Place on an ungreased baking sheet, 2 inches apart.
- Bake cookies 7-9 minutes until lightly browned and soft.
Expert Tips:
This recipe calls for softened butter. You will want to be sure your butter is softened, not melted. If you use melted butter, the cookie dough will be runny and difficult to roll into balls, making the cinnamon and sugar step almost impossible.
Soften butter by letting it sit at room temperature for about an hour, and it will be perfectly soft. We do not recommend microwaving it.
Why do I need to chill my dough?
Chilling your dough leads to tastier and better-looking cookies. When you chill the dough, the cookies will stay puffy, they cook more evenly, and the color actually looks better. Your cookies will taste better. The sugars have more time to absorb the moisture from other dry ingredients. This leads to a more condensed flavor and sweeter tasting chewy cookies with less spreading.
Thin cookies burn faster, but as the dough chills and hardens slightly, they don’t cook as flat. The chilling minimizes the spreading out of fat when you cook them. Everyone loves a thick, chewy cookie with a soft middle. My mouth is watering just writing about these. A more appealing color. This again is related to the sugar in the cookie. Chilling the dough and sugar gives the cookie a more even golden color.
Do these cookies freeze well?
These freeze great. If you have leftovers, place them in a ziplock bag or an airtight container and place them in the freezer. I think they taste even more delicious frozen. They make the most delicious hot chocolate dipping cookies.
Pumpkin Snickerdoodle Recipe
Ingredients
- ½ cup butter
- ½ cup vegetable shortening
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- ½ cup light brown sugar
- ¾ cup pure pumpkin puree
- 1 large egg
- 3 ¼ cup flour
- 2 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon cinnamon
- ½ cup sugar, (for rolling)
- 1 Tablespoon cinnamon, (for rolling)
- ½ teaspoon ground ginger, (for rolling)
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 400℉.
- Beat together butter, shortening, sugars, pumpkin, and egg.
- Mix in flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon and mix until well combined.
- Chill dough in the refrigerator for 30-60 minutes.
- Roll dough into 1-inch balls.
- In a separate bowl, mix ½ cup sugar, 1 Tablespoon cinnamon and ½ teaspoon ground ginger.
- Roll dough balls in sugar mixture until completely coated.
- Place dough balls about 2" apart on ungreased cookie sheet.
- Bake 7-9 minutes until lightly browned, but still soft.
Notes
- Your cookies will taste better. The sugars have more time to absorb the moisture from other ingredients. This leads to a more condensed flavor, and sweeter tasting cookies.
- Less spreading. Thin cookies burn faster, but as the dough chills and hardens a little bit, they don’t cook as flat. The chilling minimizes the spreading out of fat when you cook them. Everyone loves a thick chewy cookie with a soft middle. My mouth is watering just writing about these.
- A more appealing color. This again is related to the sugar in the cookie. Chilling the dough and sugar gives the cookie a more evenly golden color.
Nutrition
Video
Did You Make This Recipe?We’d love to hear your thoughts! Leave a review or a question in the comment section below the post.What to Serve With This Recipe:
Our favorite holiday drink is our grandma’s famous Homemade Apple Cider. We love dunking our cookies into it, and getting that delicious pumpkin, cinnamon, and apple flavor, all in one bite. We also love dunking our cookies in our Nutella Hot Chocolate. If you have never tried a Pumpkin Snickerdoodle, we recommend it with a little Nutella. If the Nutella is in Hot Cocoa form, that’s even better.
this looks like a really yummy recipe. Thanks for sharing.
Sounds easy to make and fantastic! I can’t wait to try it! I love anything pumpkin, especially in the fall.
Read this while drinking my pumpkin latte and eating my pumpkin pancakes and thought I have to make theses! I am on a pumpkin kick waiting for fall. Can’t wait to try!
thanks for the recipe!
These look awesome, Camille! I made a similar pumpkin snickerdoodle last week I have yet to post, but yours look SO yummy. Love soft + chewy snickerdoodles 🙂
Theae look awesome!! I did notice there is no Cream of Tartar in this recipe! What makes the tops craggly looking?!
Yum! I am making these today! It is already fall here in Alaska, and I need some pumpkin baking in my house! Thanks for sharing!
These look so yummy! Trying to make them today, but you do not list what temperature to bake them at?
This is a fantastic idea! LOVE them. Pinned, of course. 🙂
Oh my gosh- I am so sorry! Sometimes I just get typing and skip an important step! Anyway, they bake at 400 degrees F! 🙂
I have no idea! And you are right- no cream of tartar! They are delicious!
Oh my gosh- I am so sorry! Sometimes I just get typing and skip an important step! Anyway, they bake at 400 degrees F! 🙂
Just pinned also! I love all things pumpkin and plan to make this for a Halloween party we will be attending.
Yummy!!! I think I need to buy some pumpkin tomorrow and try these 🙂 Pinned!
Can you use butter in place of the margarine? I have shortening on hand all the time, and butter, but never margarine. They look yummy!
I think that butter in place of the margarine would be just fine! 🙂
I was craving snickerdoodles over the weekend and then I just came across your recipe. These look so delicious and I love anything pumpkin!
Cannot wait to try these!
I found this recipe through Pintrest. I am planning to make these for house church at our house tomorrow night. Thank you for sharing. Also I thought I’d share a tip that my baking-genius mother-in-law shared with me. My cookies always went flat no matter what type or what recipe I used. When she suggested using margarine and NOT butter they where beautiful mounds of pure goodness! Maybe no one else has this problem, but it helped me and I realized there was a question about it in your comments so I thought I’d pass the tip along!
I just finished baking a batch, they are so delicious! Somehow mine turned out a lot fluffier than the picture and did not crack on top. That is ok though, we love them anyways! They have just the right amount of pumpkin to give them that special fall flavor! 🙂
I can’t wait to make these! 🙂
What can I use in place of ginger? Pumpkin spice?
You could definitely try pumpkin spice . . . it might taste a little different, but I think that it would still be good. There is usually a little bit of ginger in pumpkin spice, so if you are allergic to ginger, you might not want to use that. 🙂
Mine didn’t flatten either-weird. I’m assuming the baking powder and soda have something to do with that? Any ideas?
So sorry- I have no idea why they wouldn’t flatten? I don’t know if it would have anything to do with altitude? I really have no idea! I am so sorry!
These were so tasty. Mine didn’t flatten either, but they were little pillows of pumpkin goodness, so I actually liked them better that way. I also added more cinnamon and a hint of nutmeg to the batter. My co workers (and husband) loved them.
I’m sooo glad that fall is finally here. People always look at me like I’m crazy when I whip out a can of pumpkin puree mid spring. Speaking of pumpkin, these look absolutely to DIE for! I can’t wait to try these babies out!
We have a debate going on….does a true snickerdoodle always have cream of tartar in the ingredients? Otherwise without it, the cookie is just a sugar cookie with cinnamon etc.?? We have seen many snickerdoodle recipes lately that do not call for cream of tartar. What exactly does the cream of tartar add to the cookie? Thanks!!
My batch is chilling right now! I was actually just thinking the other day how it would go to add pumpkin into snickerdoodles. But I wasn’t going to brave it tonight..I was just about to try out your pumpkin dump cake, when I saw this as one of your related links. Can’t wait to see how they taste! I love soft snickerdoodles!
I made these yesterday – and added chocolate chips, they are super delicious! Thanks for the recipe!! 🙂
To be honest, I am not sure! I have heard that Cream of Tartar makes the “cracks” on the top of the snickerdoodle cookie, but I honestly don’t know if that is true or not! My mom’s snickerdoodles don’t have cream of tartar and they seriously are my favorite snickerdoodles that I have ever tried. Sorry that I am not much help with the debate! 🙂 I think that if the cookie tastes good, everybody wins. 🙂
Wow made these tonight they came out awesome thanks for a great recipe!!
YUMMO! I can’t wait to try these!
Thanks for sharing! Mine turned out yummy. We frosted half the batch of cookies with a cream cheese maple frosting and the other half instead of frosting, we mixed in some white chocolate chips.
Thanks for sharing! Mine turned out yummy. We frosted half the batch of cookies with a cream cheese maple frosting and the other half instead of frosting, we mixed in some white chocolate chips.
I made these yesterday and they were SO good. I added a little allspice and ginger to the dough and used butter, sans margarin.
A tip for those getting puffy cookies that don’t flatten: Use a cup to smash them flat before baking. Pumpkin is a very fluffy veggie. It’ll bounce back up a bit and give you a very moist, tender cookie… They’ll just be a bit flatter.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snickerdoodle
Wikipedia, mediator-extrodinarie for any online debate, says that snickerdoodles do not have to contain cream of tartar. I’ve always used cream of tartar in my snickerdoodles, but it’s just for leavening, suppose. This recipe looks delicious! I’m definitely going to try it!
eating these now. My family loves them! Thank you for sharing.
Since you can make your own baking powder using Cream of tartar and baking soda (and cornstarch if you are storing your supply), it seems reasonable to me to conclude that cream of tartar is being using for leavening…Found how to make your own baking powder from a book called Kitchen Science.
Just to throw this out there, I just made these with butter and they are perfectly fluffy little mounds. However, snickerdoodles I’ve made in the past have always come out super flat. I was thinking using half shortening may have made the difference.
Just made these tonight – I only baked up a dozen, the rest of the dough is in the fridge. I don’t like to use margarine so I subbed butter, and I thought I would try using pumpkin pie spice instead of cinnamon in the dough. They came out super fluffy, moist, and soft -however they seem just a little bland. I’m blaming it on my tweaking the spices (I can’t just leave a recipe alone!) and I think I’m going to stir in some extra cinnamon before I bake the rest of them. But seriously – these have the PERFECT texture. I’ve made snickerdoodles before and they always come out flat as pancakes so it was nice to find some that stay quite puffy : ) Thanks for the recipe!
WAAAYYY too much flour.
These came out really good. I skipped the shortening and did two sticks plus two tablespoons of butter. I added 1/4 teaspoon of cloves and a 1/4 teaspoon of nutmeg to give them a little extra flavor.
Same thing happened to me. Maybe it’s the margarine? I didn’t soften mine.. Could that have something to do with it? I am pushing them down with a spoon while they are still in the oven.
You could always try flattening the cookies a little bit before baking – rather than leaving them in balls. Hope that helped! 🙂
Mmm. These sound really good. I recently made some classic snickerdoodle cookies, thick, soft, and chewy. Not the puffy, cakey version. No thank you! But I definitely want to give this version a try – and I can finally use up my leftover pumpkin!
With 3 teaspoons of rising agent in this recipe, the cookies ended up fluffy mounds. I had to press mine down a lot before baking to get them to look like cookies when they were finished.
I just wanted to chime in here – these cookies were disappointing. I think they may need more pumpkin or something or more spices. They were bland! I loved the texture. Mine didn’t spread either like others have mentioned but that didn’t bother me. I was really disappointed especially since everything else I’ve made from your blog has been AWESOME. I think this recipe needs another go – maybe some testing, tweaking, and relaunching. They have a lot of potential though.
Slightly flatten cookie with bottom of drinking glass that has a flat bottom, before baking.
I made these today and they were bland in taste and not all like I expected. I suspect that the recipe calls for too much flour.
I made these today and they turned out great! They are moist and fluffy. Are these fine to leave out at room temperature or do you refrigerate them?
They are fine at room temp for the first day. If they long laster than that I would put them in an airtight container and stick them in the fridge. 🙂
Just made these and they were delicious! Mine did flatten out. I used all butter (not margarine or shortening). I also added a little cream of tartar just because I like it. My husband has already asked me to make them again. Thanks!
I didn’t see my comment published, so this might be a dupe.
I made these tonight and they were awesome. Mine flattened out. I used all butter (no margarine or shortening) and I added a little cream of tartar because I like it. My husband has already asked me to make them again this weekend. Thanks!
I made these as the recipe called out. On my first pan I put on the cookies like balls, as snickerdoodles typically spread and flatten. So for all other pans, I made the cookies larger and flattened them with a fork. They came out great! Flavor and texture are to my liking. I give the recipe a thumbs up. I may take on some of the suggestions as I think others have good ideas too.
I made these for Thanksgiving last year, and they turned out fabulous! This year, my family asked if I would make them again–definitely going to be a holiday tradition!
Camille, thank you so much for the delicious recipe! 🙂
After having tasted some superb, moist homemade pumpkin snickerdoodles from a farm, I was eager to try this recipe. Reading some of the comments I decided to use less flour. I don’t see how I could have used the full amount it called for without being a pasty mass. I was quite dissatisfied:( I agree with some of the posters, they had a nice texture but really bland flavor, I would say less flour and baking powder /soda more pumpkin puree! 🙂
Hi Vicki, this is what I found on the internet about Cream of Tartar…..and if it’s from the internet it must be true! Right!? Ha ha! Anyway, this is kind of interesting. — Cream of tartar is a weak acid. It’s purpose is to react with the baking soda for leavening. If you can’t get it, you can use some other acid, e.g. citric acid, but it will introduce a slight taste of its own, and it is stronger than cream of tartar. You can also substitute baking powder instead of the baking soda + cream of tartar combination.
I had the exact same problem with too much flour. I?ve made them twice now, and the first batch (where I followed the recipe exactly) came out tasting like cooked balls of flour. In the second batch, I switched the flour to only 2 ¾ cups, added a full cup of Pumpkin, plus 1 tsp Cream of Tartar, and 1 tsp Pumpkin Spice (to amp up the pumpkin flavor). They turned out SO much better! I?m not sure if the 3 ¼ cup flour was a typo in the recipe or what. As I added all the flour during the original batch, I kept thinking?no, these cannot possibly take this much flour! Should?ve listened to my baking instinct on that one.
They?re delicious with the above changes – a big hit with co-workers and friends. I?ll definitely be making them again. Oh and also, I forgot to use a glass to squish down the first batch – and for some reason they tasted even more floury when I didn?t flatten them. So flattening them with the glass is a must.
Two of my favorites together–yum! When I make Snickerdoodles, I roll them into balls, (I use part butter & part shortening),and then butter the bottom of a glass and dip it in sugar. Then I press the cookie balls gently. They always turn out crinkled and round, yet not balls, cookie-shaped.
If your baking powder, soda & salt are old, they will be flat. If you use too much butter/shortening, they will be spread out, but flat. Too much flour, baking powder, soda & salt will make Snickerdoodles taste more like a cornbread. Measure carefully. Hope that helps.
I loved these! I used a little more pumpkin, a little less flour, more cinnamon and some clear Mexican vanilla. I’ll be sharing a link to your recipe on my blog with my notes! Thanks for another amazing recipe. http://learningasIsew.blogspot.com
This recipe does not turn out flat, tasty cookies! I followed the recipe exactly but they are cakey, doughy, and bland. Is the amount of flour a typo in the recipe? What a disappointment!
I’ve used this recipe several times and never have had anything but delicious cookies. I’m wondering if those getting a bland cookie are sifting their flour well? Sifted/fluffed flour will measure different than packed, IMO. Just trying to make sense of other experiences.
I made a batch of these a few weeks ago. Yesterday I found a ziplock baggie with four cookies in them. I thought for sure they would be dry dead hockey pucks but they were still quite moist. I’m making another batch tonight to take Thanksgiving camping. I also add pumpkin pie spice, just a flavor preference.
I love these cookies and everyone I share cookies with want the recipe. I am SO glad I found this recipe!
I made these cookies per the recipe. The dough was extremely wet. Recipe calls for 2 3/4 flour but in your video you put 3 1/4. What is it supposed to be?
I’ve been making these cookies for the last couple of years and they have always turned out great. I went to make them again this year and noticed the recipe site has been update. The cookies did not turn out how they normally do. They were soggy and definitely not as good as they’ve been in the past. Did the recipe change when the page was updated? Could you please post the old recipe? I unfortunately did not save it. Thank you.
I have gone in and edited the recipe to what it used to be. Hope this helps.
Thank you! I will have to try it again and see if it turns out well again. It is such a good recipe when it turns out well.
These cookies look delicious. I want to try to make them but need clarification on the baking powder and baking soda.
The printed recipe calls for 2 tsp baking powder, and 1 tsp baking soda. But in the video, you say to use 1 tsp baking powder, and 2 tsp baking soda. So which measurements are correct? And maybe that is the reason people are having varying results?
Thank you,