Pumpkin Cookie Pointers

In an attempt to feel festive and fallish, I baked up a batch of Martha’s pumpkin cookies with brown butter icing. The recipe is included in her “Cookies” book and is also online here.

The cookies are beyond delicious, but the path to achieving such deliciousness was not easy. Rather than give you a play-by-play of the recipe, I’ll share a few pointers to consider in case you find yourself with nothing to do one afternoon and a hankering for some pumpkin cookies.

-- Give yourself a block of about four hours to make these. If you don’t have that much time to spare, consider halving the recipe.

-- I would also recommend halving the recipe if you don’t have an immediate need for six dozen cookies. The cookies are really hard to store because of the icing – You can’t stack them on top of each other in a Tupperware container unless you want a sticky mess. Because of this I have several trays of them covered in plastic wrap lining my counters right now.

-- I didn’t really read the recipe before I started and therefore experienced total panic when I got to the part that said I had to pipe the dough onto a cookie sheet using a pastry bag. I am not a friend of pastry bags, but I decided to give it a try and it was actually pretty easy (even though I have the cheapest pastry bag ever and I'm sure I didn't use the right kind of tip). Definitely more time-consuming than simply scooping the dough, though. I do wonder if they would come out the same if you rolled the dough into a ball and then flattened the ball. If you’ve tried that technique, let me know!

-- My icing came out runnier than it looked in the photo featured in the “Cookies” book. I guess I could have tried adding more powdered sugar, but I didn’t want to potentially ruin a good thing. Instead, I put down some waxed paper and iced the cookies over that for easy cleanup.

I hope I haven’t discouraged anyone from trying this recipe, because the cookies truly are scrumptious. They turn out a cakey texture and the browned butter really adds a unique and tasty flavor. Be prepared to be stuck in the kitchen for a while, but don’t worry – the reward will be a sweet one!

What’s your favorite pumpkiny treat for fall?

Martha's New Cookbook: Cookies

Surprised that one of my fellow Martha-lovers haven't broken this news yet, but now it's mine, all mine. Martha Stewart recently released the latest cookbook in her collection, Martha Stewart's Cookies. I know it includes a lot of recipes from her magazines, so I'm not certain if it has new recipes in it as well, but no matter; it's nice to have the collection in one place. More importantly, however, is the fact that each recipe has a full-color picture of what the finished product should look like ... certainly the quickest way to my heart.

Cleverly organized by texture, the recipes in Martha Stewart’s Cookies inspire you to think of a classic, nostalgic treat with more nuance. Chapters include all types of treasures: Light and Delicate (Cherry Tuiles, Hazelnut Cookies, Chocolate Meringues); Rich and Dense (Key Lime Bars, Chocolate Mint Sandwiches, Peanut Butter Swirl Brownies); Chunky and Nutty (Magic Blondies, Turtle Brownies, White Chocolate-Chunk Cookies); Soft and Chewy (Snickerdoodles, Fig Bars, Chewy Chocolate Gingerbread Cookies); Crisp and Crunchy (ANZAC Biscuits, Chocolate Pistachio Biscotti, Almond Spice Wafers); Crumbly and Sandy (Cappuccino-Chocolate Bites, Maple-Pecan Shortbread, Lemon-Apricot Sandwiches); and Cakey and Tender (Lemon Madeleines, Carrot Cake Cookies, Pumpkin Cookies with Brown-Butter Icing).