Who doesn’t love a snickerdoodle? So, when I ran across a recipe for Pumpkin Snickerdoodles, I knew I found a must-make for the fall season.

What I liked most about this recipe is that it promised soft and chewy snickerdoodles.

For a lot of people, that might not seem like a very big promise.

But, living at elevation, a lot of cookie recipes come out flat and crunchy. The down and dirty on why this happens is the lower air pressure at altitude causes less resistance for the leavening agent, resulting in flat cookies.

So, would the promise of soft and chewy snickerdoodles be kept at altitude? Keep reading.

Looking for More Pumpkin Inspiration?

Check out our Gifts of the Great Pumpkin post that includes Pumpkin Muffins, Pumpkin Cinnamon Swirl Bread, and Pumpkin Baked Oatmeal.

Simple to Make−Pumpkin Snickerdoodles

Get the recipe from: Live Well Bake Often

KitchenAid Mixer

I love to bake. And I used to bake a lot.

I mean a lot, a lot.

And one of the best kitchen investments I ever made was my KitchenAid Mixer−the gold standard of mixers. I’ve owned it for more than 25 years and it still operates perfectly.

I don’t bake as often as I would like anymore, though, because my husband isn’t a fan of sweets and my kids are grown and mostly flown.

That leaves all the baked goods to me.

Not optimal.

But I wanted to try this Pumpkin Snickerdoodle recipe and I knew my taste-tester daughter would gobble them up because…pumpkin.

So, out came my KitchenAid Mixer! And I got back to one of my kitchen loves. Baking.

Pumpkin Snickerdoodles
Pumpkin Snickerdoodle ingredients

Six things to know about the Pumpkin Snickerdoodle recipe:

  • This is a silly easy recipe with a subtle pumpkin flavor. Don’t be deterred by the prep time (45 minutes) or total time (57 minutes) listed on the recipe. The bulk of the prep time is the 30 minutes the dough sits in the fridge before baking. That means you’re only spending 15 active minutes prepping these cookies. Super fast!
  • Pro Tip: How to quickly soften frozen butter. We’ve all done it. Gotten ready to bake and realized we forgot to set out our butter to soften. No worries! Just drop your wrapped stick of butter into a Ziploc, close the Ziploc removing the air in the bag, drop the Ziploc into a bowl of warm (not hot!) water, place a heavy glass (or other heavy object) on the bag to keep the butter stick(s) submerged, and wait 20-30 minutes. Your butter will be perfectly softened!
Soften frozen butter in 20-30 minutes in a Ziploc submerged in warm water.
  • It’s vital to mix your wet and dry ingredients separately. There’s a reason the recipe has you whisk your dry ingredients together before adding them to the wet ingredients and has you mix your wet ingredients together before adding the dry ingredients. It’s to ensure even distribution of the ingredients into the batter. If you don’t mix them together separately before combining the wet and dry ingredients, you run the risk of having concentrations of each ingredient in the batter. There’s nothing worse than biting into a cookie composed mainly of cream of tartar or egg yolk.
Once you measure your dry ingredients into a bowl, be sure to whisk them together BEFORE you add them to the wet ingredients.
  • Don’t over mix your batter when you add the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients. All you want to do when you add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients is combine them until they’re fully incorporated. That’s it. Once that’s done, STOP! Over mixing toughens and strengthens the gluten in the flour and can lead to tough, dense cookies.
Cover and refrigerate your dough for 30 minutes before baking.
  • For a more intense flavor, increase the amount of pumpkin pie spice, NOT pumpkin puree. It might seem like the best way to up the pumpkin flavor would be with the puree, but baking is a science and increasing a wet ingredient like the pumpkin puree will alter the structure of the recipe and you won’t get the same result in the final cookies. The dry pumpkin pie spice is a concentrated flavor and you can increase it by as little as 1/2 t. to drastically increase the pumpkin flavor without compromising the structure of the cookies.
  • Roll all your dough into balls first then roll all the dough balls in the cinnamon sugar. It’s quicker than rolling a ball, covering it in sugar, rolling another ball and covering it in sugar. And I’m all about doing things quicker.
Pumpkin Snickerdoodles
Ready for the oven!
  • You can double (or triple) this recipe. I tripled this recipe and had no issues. If you are going to do this, just be sure your mixer can hold double or triple the ingredients and add the dry ingredients in batches, mixing just to incorporate. You’ll also want to be sure to keep your dough chilled between baking batches. Place the prepared dough balls on a parchment lined baking sheet and pop them into the fridge until you’re ready for the next batch.

Did this recipe keep its promise?

Absolutely! These were the softest, chewiest cookies I’ve had in a long time.

And my taste-tester daughter mentioned (unsolicited) that the cookies were both soft and chewy.

Mission accomplished!

Pumpkin Snickerdoodles
Perfectly soft and chewy Pumpkin Snickerdoodles!