My Teaching Diaries: Pumpkin Cookies with Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting

We are now 2 days away from September which means we are only 22 days away from the first day of fall....YES!

I am coming into my prime slowly but surely and have now completed the third thing off of my Fall Baking List!

Today I bring to you the product of not wanting to think about taking the GRE.... Soft Pumpkin Cookies with a Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting.

I bake when I am stressed and I had just about had enough of looking at big vocabulary words and math problems for the day so I started baking.

The original pin for this is on my Fall Baking Pinterest Board and you can find it here!

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup butter, softened

1 1/2 cups white sugar

1 cup canned pumpkin puree

1 egg

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Frosting:

1/2 cup softened butter

1/2 cup softened cream cheese

2-3 cups powdered sugar

1 tsp. vanilla extract

1 tsp. ground cinnamon

Start by preheating that oven to 350, you know when you preheat the oven that it starts to feel good, cause glory is about to happen!

Then take the Flour, Baking Powder, Baking Soda, Ground Cinnamon, Ground Nutmeg, Ground Cloves, and Salt and mix them together in a bowl, and set aside. (And if you are me, make sure you got your Frank Sinatra Pandora list going on in the background)

In another bowl, take that 1/2 cup butter and white sugar and cream them together. (Jenny mistake, my butter was not softened -_- can we say over eager baker? Make sure you soften it ok? Ok.)

Now comes the reason we are all here. Add that glorious Pumpkin. Oh Pumpkin how you amaze me with your ways. Welcome back for this season, you have been so missed.

Add the egg and the vanilla as well and mix that all together!

Then slowly....don't get too excited, start to add the flour mixture bit by bit until all is right with the world and you have a lovely batch of pumpkin cookie dough.*drooling is acceptable*

Get your cookie sheets out and if you are like me and do most things just like mom did I put tin foil down because that means you have a much easier clean up. Spray that pan with some non-stick cooking spray.

Drop a tablespoon of cookie dough for each cookie. (SIDE NOTE: What you drop is what you get, if you are like me and just dropped some because you couldn't wait to get to eat them, then they will bake just like that. On my second batch I greased up my hands and actually made the cookies a more uniform shape, it's up to you how you want to do it)

Place them in the oven and let them bake for 15-20 minutes until perfection arises. While they are baking it's ok to sit down, relax, and just breathe in all that cinnamon and pumpkin smell.

Pull them out and set them on cooling racks to be completely cooled.

See more uniform cookies up top and to the bottom what I like to call more Avant Garde...

While those beauties are just cooling, get all of your items together to make what could possible lead to my death with the greatness of it.

Take the butter (note butter softened this time!) and cream cheese and cream them together in a bowl.

Then slowly add 2-3 cups of powdered sugar about 1/2 cup at a time so that it doesn't produce too much of a mess, but what is baking without a little mess! I think I ended up with 2 1/4 cup sugar.

Then comes the best part add some vanilla and the ever so great cinnamon and transform that from any old cream cheese frosting to the wonderful Cinnamon Cream Cheese frosting.