Sweet Melissa Sundays: Spiced Pumpkin Cookie Cakes

It's definitely fall in Washington, DC. The leaves are changing, and this week the weather turned downright nasty. I was so excited to make these pumpkin cookies; I love just about any incarnation of pumpkin, with the exception of pumpkin pie.


I will say, when I looked at the recipe, my initial thought was something along the lines of, "hmmmmm, perhaps these are going to be a tad more involved than I thought." These cookie cakes are really whoopie pies by any other name. The dough (or batter) comes together pretty easily, and then they need to be spooned or piped onto the cookie sheets. The only changes I made to the cookie dough were to sub half Steen's Cane Syrup for the molasses, and I added an additional teaspoon of Penzey's Cake Spice (I love that stuff!). If I'd had pumpkin pie spice, I think I would have used that instead. I just like a nice and spicy pumpkin flavor, and I knew that 1 teaspoon of cinnamon wasn't going to cut it. I didn't want to dig for my pastry bag, so I used the ziploc bag to pipe these out. For the most part, my cookies baked up ok. I had a few cookie casualties, there must have been pockets of air, because I had some explosions!

The frosting that sandwiches the cookies together is a cream cheese frosting. Now, I understand that cream cheese and pumpkin are flavors that work well together, but I just really don't like sweetened cream cheese. I'm that oddball that doesn't like cheesecake. Dudley happens to luh, luh, luuuuuhve cream cheese frosting, though, and he was around when I made these, so I made half sandwiched with the frosting, and I left the other half plain for me to nibble on.


These cookies were slightly more work than I'd bargained for, but they are tasty. Dudley was a big fan of the sandwiched cookies, and I like the plain cookies, too. I will say, I'm glad that I added more spice, as I think just one tablespoon of cinnamon wouldn't be enough for me. Thanks to Debbie of Everyday Blessings of the Five Dees for picking such a wonderful seasonal recipe. I'm really glad that I got to make these! You can check her blog post to read about her pumpkin cookie cakes and get the recipe.