It’s the last day of October and we have dedicated this month to ALL THINGS PUMPKIN! We have brought you Pumpkin Streusel Coffee Cake, Pumpkin Dulce de leche Pie, Pumpkin Bread Pudding with Cinnamon Caramel Sauce, and the unforgettable Pumpkin Spice Cake with Cream Cheese frosting that we featured on Elevate Everyday, but you can find it here too!  In order to properly round out our pumpkin dessert collection, we need to share with you a bomb pumpkin chocolate chip cookie.  This recipe is a family favorite from my friend Rachel who actually shared it with me years ago before I had a dessert blog and I’m so excited to finally drop this knowledge on all you lovely people.  What I really liked about her cookies is that they didn’t slime out as pumpkin cookies tend to do – and they have butter, because she’s a reasonable person, but they also have applesauce adding to the moisture and taking from the fat so they are for sure a lower calorie cookie option than their traditional CCC counterpart.  She insists on Guittard milk chocolate chips- which are so creamy and good, but I liked them a touch better with semi-sweet because I’m just drawn that way.  Use whatever you like and have a fantastic Halloween!

1/4 cup butter
1/4 cup applesauce
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup pumpkin (don’t use more, it will make them sticky)
2 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 of a bag (11.5 ounces) guittard milk chocolate chips

1. Preheat oven to 375 and either lay down a silpat, parchment or spray a few large cookie sheets.  My friend Rachel always doubles this recipe, so feel free to do that, but this makes loads of cookies, so only double if you’re baking for a crowd.  She suggests one and a half a bag of chocolate chips if you double.
2. Cream the butter, applesauce, sugar, egg and vanilla.  Add the pumpkin to the wet ingredients.  In a separate bowl combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon.  Mix the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients and add chocolate chips.  My friend insists on the Guittard milk chocolate chips, which are super good, but I did a few with semi-sweet and liked them even more, use whichever you prefer, I think about 9 ounces or 1 3/4 cups was about right, but use as many as seems right to you!
3. Either use a cookie scoop or just eyeball about 2 tablespoon sized cookies and space them on your prepared cookie sheet with some room to expand.  Bake for about 10 minutes until cookies are clearly golden brown around the bottom – these are not like normal chocolate chip cookies where you want to underbake them, make sure they are done.

   Recipe courtesy of Rachel Clark