Pumpkin Coffee Cake Cookies with Vanilla Glaze

Most pumpkin cookies puff up into something closer to a small cake. These don’t. They spread wide and thin under a blanket of brown sugar streusel, with vanilla glaze in ribbons across the top.

Pumpkin coffee cake cookies bake up chewy rather than tender, and they’re big enough that one is plenty (but it’s hard to stop at just one!).

Grab your baking sheet and let’s make it!

Why You’ll Love This Recipe

• No chilling, no mixer and no creaming. The butter goes in melted, so the dough comes together in about fifteen minutes.
• They bake up around four inches across, so eighteen cookies go further than the number sounds.
• The streusel and the glaze do all the decorating. Nothing to pipe, nothing to get neat.
• Half a cup of pumpkin is all this takes, and the rest of the can covers a batch of high protein pumpkin overnight oats.
• The glaze firms up within an hour or two, so they stack in a tin without smudging.

When and Who This Is For

It’s aimed at anyone who has been quietly disappointed by pumpkin cookies before. The blotting step makes the difference in how these come out with a proper chew instead of a soft dome.

This is a weekend bake rather than a weeknight one. Eighteen cookies at eight to a sheet means three rounds through the oven, and then the glaze wants an hour before anything gets stacked, so put music or a nice podcast on.

These cookies are vegetarian, and there’s nothing nutty in the recipe as written, which helps for school events. Not vegan, dairy free or gluten free, since there’s butter in both the streusel and the dough, milk in the glaze, two egg yolks and all purpose flour throughout. If you need a plant based version, my vegan pumpkin chocolate chip cookies are the closest thing on the site.

Ingredients

For the streusel

• 6 tablespoons unsalted butter (85 g), softened
• ¾ cup brown sugar (165 g), packed
• ¾ cup all purpose flour (94 g)
• 2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice

For the cookie dough

• ½ cup canned pumpkin puree (122 g) – I recommend Libby’s
• ½ cup unsalted butter (113 g), melted
• 1 cup brown sugar (220 g), packed
• ½ cup white granulated sugar (100 g)
• 2 egg yolks
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1¾ cups all purpose flour (219 g)
• 1 tablespoon pumpkin pie spice
• 1½ teaspoons baking soda
• ½ teaspoon baking powder
• ½ teaspoon salt

For the glaze

• 1 cup powdered sugar (120 g)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 tablespoons milk (30 ml)

How to Make Pumpkin Coffee Cake Cookies

1. Heat the oven to 350°F (175°C) and line a baking sheet with parchment.
   
2. Make the streusel first. Stir the brown sugar, flour and pumpkin pie spice together with a fork. Add the softened butter and work it in until you have crumbs in a range of sizes. I stop when the biggest clumps are about pea sized, because pushing further turns it into one solid paste that bakes flat instead of crumbly. Set it aside.

3. Blot the pumpkin. Spread the puree on a plate, press folded paper towels into it, and keep swapping in dry ones until it looks more like a soft dough than a puree. You’re aiming to lose about half the volume. This is the step the whole recipe stands on so I don’t recommend skipping it. You can also use a fine mesh sieve instead of paper towels – just press the puree through with the back of a spoon.

4. Mix the wet ingredients. Put the blotted pumpkin in a large bowl. Melt the butter and let it cool until it’s no longer warm to the touch before it goes in, along with both sugars. Hot butter pushes the spread too far and you end up with pancakes. Mix until smooth. The bowl goes very dark at this point, which is what you want because the brown sugar is dissolving.

5. Add the egg yolks and vanilla, and whisk until the mixture looks glossy.

6. Add the dry ingredients. Sift in the flour, pumpkin pie spice, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Fold with a spatula until you have a thick dough that holds its shape when you press it.

7. Scoop with a 2 inch scoop and space the balls about 2 inches apart. Eight to a sheet is the most I’d attempt. They spread further than you might initially think.

8. Add the streusel. Press a well into the middle of each ball with your fingers and flatten the whole thing slightly. Pack the streusel into the well and take it partway down the sides. Use more than looks sensible, because the streusel spreads outward with the cookie as it bakes and ends up covering less of the top than it did going in. You want to press it in rather than sprinkling it on.

9. Bake for 12 minutes, until the cookies have spread and the edges have taken a little color. Two sheets fit in most ovens at once, but make sure to swap their positions halfway through. The centers will still look soft when they’re done baking. Leave them on the sheet for 10 more minutes so they finish setting before you move them.

10. Make the glaze while they cool. Whisk the powdered sugar, vanilla and milk together, slowly at first so the sugar stays in the bowl, then quickly to break up the lumps.

11. Drizzle once they’re cool. Do it over parchment or a rack, because a fair amount runs off the sides. If you’ve made pumpkin cookies with icing before you’ll know the drizzle usually lands on a smooth surface, and here it catches in the streusel crevices instead, which is what gives you those thick and thin lines.

Tips and Variations

• Brown the butter. Melt it in a light colored pan and keep going until the milk solids on the bottom turn golden and it smells nutty, then cool it completely before it goes into the dough. Browning develops toasted notes in those milk solids that plain melted butter doesn’t have. It will also darken the cookies a shade or two.

• Maple glaze. Half a teaspoon of maple extract in place of the vanilla is the version I’d make for a Thanksgiving table.

• Pecans in the streusel. A handful, chopped small, worked in with the butter.

• Bake two sheets at once if they fit. Most ovens take two, swapping their positions halfway so they color evenly. It also keeps the dough off the counter, which matters more than it sounds. Melted butter dough softens as it sits, so a bowl that’s been out through a long first bake gives you a wider, thinner second tray. If you’re going one sheet at a time, or your kitchen runs warm, park the bowl in the fridge between rounds.

• Measure the flour properly. Spoon it into the cup and level it off rather than dipping the cup into the bag. Scooping compacts it and can add a good deal more flour than the recipe wants, which in a dough this wet is the difference between chewy and dry.

Ways to Serve These Pumpkin Cookies with Icing

• Next to a cup of coffee – first and foremost!
• On a Thanksgiving dessert table, where the size means they hold their own beside pie.
• Broken in half and shared
• Stacked in a tin for a cookie swap once the icing has set, with parchment between the layers. Count on fewer per tin than you’re used to.
• Warmed for a few seconds in the microwave the next day, which loosens the middle again.
• At a bake sale – and you can price them individually since they’re pretty big and one is usually enough per serving

Related Recipes

If you’re working through the best pumpkin cookies recipes this season, these are the closest relatives on the site and none of them overlap much with this one.

• Soft Pumpkin Cookies with Chocolate Chips go the opposite direction on texture. Tall, domed and tender, with no blotting at all. Worth having both recipes if you bake for people who disagree about this.

• Pumpkin Pie Cookies with Custard Filling and Whipped Cream use the same trick of pressing a well into each ball of dough, but fill it with spiced pumpkin custard instead of streusel and finish with whipped cream.

• Fall Bundt Cake with Carrots and Cream Cheese Frosting. The sliced dessert for the same table.

• Soft and Chewy Vegan Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies take exactly the half cup of pumpkin you have sitting in the open can, and they’re dairy free and egg free.

• Pumpkin Fall Coffee Creamer for the coffee half of the coffee cake experience.

Put One in Someone’s Hand

These are the kind of cookie you hand over rather proudly – the streusel and glaze make them look like more effort than they were.

Heat the oven on the first properly cold weekend and let the house fill with brown sugar and cinnamon. Save this to your fall baking board so it’s waiting when that day arrives.