pumpkin cheesecake snickerdoodles

It's FALL! Which means a few things:

Marching band, foliage, apples, pumpkins, and sweating at noon because of the sweater you picked out when it was freezing in the morning

But most importantly, it means that my apartment is filled with the comforting scents of apple, pumpkin, and spice.

My cabinets are filled with cans of pumpkin puree, and this weekend was homecoming! So naturally, I had to make pumpkin cookies. I brought these to the Glorus (Cornell Glee Club + Chorus) tailgate and they were gone within 15 minutes.

Here's the recipe that I used to make these wonderful pumpkin snickerdoodles that are filled with cheesecake!

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I made some adjustments to this recipe and used my own cheesecake filling recipe.

Makes 20-24 cookies

Cookie ingredients:

• 1 cup cold butter

• 1 cup granulated sugar

• 1/2 cup dark brown sugar (light is fine)

• 3/4 cup pumpkin puree

• 1 large egg

• 2 tsp vanilla extract

• 3 3/4 cup flour

• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder

• 1/2 tsp salt

• 1 1/2 tsp cornstarch

• 1/2 tsp cinnamon

• 1/2 tsp pumpkin pie spice

Filling ingredients:

• 8 oz cream cheese

• 1/2 cup sugar

• 1 egg

• 2 tbs all-purpose flour

• 1 tsp vanilla

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Cookie Instructions

1. Sift flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, cornstarch, and pumpkin pie spice in a bowl.

2. In a separate bowl, cream butter and sugars together until soft and fluffy (2-3 minutes)

3. Add egg, pumpkin, and vanilla to butter/sugar mix. Beat until light and fluffy again.

4. Slowly add dry ingredient mixture to wet ingredient mixture. Do not overmix! This should be a thick dough and the flour should not be overly incorporated.

5. Refrigerate dough for 1 hour.

Filling instructions

1. Cream cream cheese and sugar until well-combined and fluffy.

2. Beat in egg and vanilla.

3. Add flour and beat until homogenous.

4. Refrigerate for 1 hour.

• When ready to bake cookies, preheat oven to 350F.

• Roll cookies into medium-sized balls, then press thumb into middle to create indent. Spoon a teaspoon of filling into each indent. Roll more cookie dough into a ball, then flatten it and place over filled cookie dough half. Press together the edges of each half, and gently form a ball between the two.

• Bake 16-17 minutes, but begin checking cookies for readiness at 14 minutes. Cookies should be soft but firm.

• When out of the oven, let rest on tray for 5 minutes, then transfer to cooling rack.

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Tips:

• Using cold butter and creaming it well incorporates more air into your cookies, which makes them fluffier and thicker.

• The cornstarch also helps the cookies to be fluffier and not spread as much.

• Add more spices like nutmeg! I personally did not have any on hand, but that would definitely make these cookies even better.