These pumpkin snickerdoodles are everything you love about snickerdoodles and pumpkin pie in one. I love the sweet flavor and creamy texture that the white chocolate chips add, but feel free to leave them out. Adapted from my pumpkin chocolate chip cookies, this cookie dough comes together without an egg and the cookies have a wonderfully chewy texture.
I originally published this recipe in 2014 and have since added new photos and a few more success tips.
If the end of summer has a silver lining, it’s that September marks the start of the Fall Baking Season. And when the weather begins to cool down, I always enjoy baking a batch of seasonal cookies. We have plenty of recipes to choose from and I have even more in my cookie cookbook!
My brown butter pumpkin oatmeal cookies are one of my favorites because they’re made with ultra-flavorful brown butter. (An over-the-top cookie, try them ASAP!) Then there’s my regular pumpkin cookies, which are similar to cakey muffin tops. They’re definitely delicious, but sometimes you crave a pumpkin cookie that has the same dense & chewy texture as a regular chocolate chip cookie. That’s where my beloved chewy pumpkin chocolate chip cookies come in. Today’s pumpkin snickerdoodles are a variation of that recipe. So good and always a hit!
These Pumpkin Snickerdoodles Are:
- A reader-favorite recipe since 2014.
- Deliciously spiced—and you can use homemade pumpkin pie spice!
- Egg free. See all of my egg-free baking recipes.
- Excellent both with and without white chocolate chips.
- Pretty quick—only 30 minutes of refrigerator chill time.
- One of my favorite recipes to make with leftover pumpkin puree.
My best advice: Make a double batch, because these disappear quickly!
One reader, Kristen, commented: “Such a delicious fall cookie! Made these for the first time and shared them with my family and coworkers. They got rave reviews! They remained chewy and soft with that slight wonderful bite from the rolled sugar. I made mine a bit smaller than pictured, but they still came out amazing. I am saving this recipe. I agree, you need to make a double batch of these. ★★★★★“
Before You Begin, Blot the Pumpkin
This is actually optional, but I find it remarkably useful when I make brown butter pumpkin oatmeal cookies and soft pumpkin cookies.
Pumpkin is approximately 90% water by mass, which isn’t really useful in a chewy cookie recipe. (Think about it—there isn’t usually liquid in a chocolate chip cookie recipe, is there?) Using a paper towel, blot out some of the pumpkin’s moisture, so all that’s left is the flavor:
Here Are All of My Success Tips
- Skip the egg: What is the purpose of eggs in a cookie recipe? They bind ingredients together, tenderize the texture, and leave behind moisture. After some experimenting, I cut out the egg completely because pumpkin can replace it. If you’re in need of other egg-free cookie recipes, check out my shortbread recipe.
- Use both baking powder AND baking soda: To ensure these pumpkin snickerdoodles rise and hold their shape, use both and make sure they’re fresh. I replace them every 3 months because I find they lose their strength not much longer after that.
- Add plenty of spice: You can use store-bought or homemade pumpkin pie spice, plus extra cinnamon in the dough and more for the coating.
- Slightly flatten the balls before baking: The cookies won’t spread unless you give them a head-start. Slightly flatten the balls of dough before baking, as pictured below.
- Chill the cookie dough: Chilling the cookie dough helps guarantee the cookies don’t overspread. The dough only needs about 30 minutes in the refrigerator before shaping and baking. Pretty quick!
- Give it time: Let the pumpkin snickerdoodles cool on a cooling rack for a while. Like any cookie, they’re tasty warm from the oven, but I find their chewiness and flavor amplify over time. Sometimes I even leave them uncovered on the cooling rack overnight. The next day, they’re chewier and more flavorful. (Now the real test is if you can wait that long to dig in!)
These Step Photos Will Help:
While you can leave them out if desired, the white chocolate chips add texture and a deliciously sweet and creamy flavor. I love them both ways. Here is the cookie dough plain, and again with the white chocolate chips mixed in.
After 30 minutes of chilling, the cookie dough is a little more solid and sturdy and that’s because there’s butter in the dough. (Butter solidifies when it’s cold.) Use a medium cookie scoop to shape each ball of dough. You need 1.5 Tablespoons of dough per cookie:
Roll the dough balls in a cinnamon-sugar mixture, and then arrange on a lined baking sheet. Slightly flatten the cookie dough balls with the bottom of a spoon or cup:
Plain or White Chocolate Pumpkin Snickerdoodles
Considering the flavor, texture, and ease of this recipe—these pumpkin snickerdoodles are nothing short of a dream! Many readers bake them with white chocolate chips, but I love them plain. You could even swap the white chocolate chips for cinnamon chip morsels, a product by Hershey’s that you can usually find around the holidays.
P.S.: Because this recipe uses only 6 Tbsp of pumpkin puree, you may have extras to use up. Here are recipes to make with leftover pumpkin puree. For even more inspiration, here are my 30+ best pumpkin dessert recipes.
And if snickerdoodles are your thing, don’t sleep on these recipes: classic snickerdoodles (a no-chill cookie recipe), caramel snickerdoodles, chocolate snickerdoodles, and maple pecan snickerdoodles. Oh, and don’t forget snickerdoodle blondies, snickerdoodle cupcakes and snickerdoodle cake!
More Fall Baking Recipes
- Pumpkin Bars
- Maple Brown Sugar Cookies
- Pumpkin Donuts & Pumpkin Scones
- Apple Pie Bars
- Pumpkin Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Snickerdoodle Cake & Snickerdoodle Cupcakes
Pumpkin Snickerdoodles
- Prep Time: 45 minutes
- Cook Time: 10 minutes
- Total Time: 1 hour, 10 minutes
- Yield: 18 cookies
- Category: Cookies
- Method: Baking
- Cuisine: American
Description
These soft & chewy snickerdoodle cookies are full of pumpkin, white chocolate, and cinnamon sugar. Warning: they disappear quickly, so make a double batch!
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup (8 Tbsp; 113g) unsalted butter, melted & slightly cooled
- 1/4 cup (50g) packed light or dark brown sugar
- 1/2 cup (100g) granulated sugar
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- 6 Tablespoons (86g) pumpkin puree (see note)*
- 1 and 1/2 cups (188g) all-purpose flour (spooned & leveled)
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 and 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice*
- optional: 1/2 cup (90g) white chocolate chips, plus a few extra for the tops
Coating
- 1/2 cup (100g) granulated sugar
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
Instructions
- Whisk the melted butter, brown sugar, and granulated sugar together in a medium bowl until no brown sugar lumps remain. Whisk in the vanilla and blotted pumpkin until smooth. Set aside.
- Whisk the flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, and pumpkin pie spice together in a large bowl. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix together with a large spoon or rubber spatula. The dough will be very soft. Fold in 1/2 cup white chocolate chips, if using. The chips may not stick to the dough because of the melted butter, but do your best to combine.
- Cover the dough and chill for 30 minutes or up to 3 days. Chilling the dough is a must for this recipe.
- Remove dough from the refrigerator. Preheat oven to 350°F (177°C). Line two large baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mats.
- Shape & coat the cookie dough balls: Scoop the dough, about 1.5 Tablespoons of dough per cookie, and roll each into balls. Mix the coating ingredients together, and then roll each cookie dough ball generously in the cinnamon-sugar coating. Arrange cookie dough balls 3 inches apart on the prepared baking sheets. Using the back of a spoon or the bottom of a cup/measuring cup, slightly flatten the tops of the dough balls. (Without doing so, the cookies may not spread.)
- Bake for 11–12 minutes or until the edges appear set. The cookies will look very soft in the center. Remove from the oven. If you find that your cookies didn’t spread much at all, flatten them out gently with the back of a spoon when you take them out of the oven. If desired, press a few white chocolate chips into the tops of the warm cookies. This is only for looks.
- Cool cookies on the baking sheets for at least 10 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely. The longer the cookies cool, the better they taste! The flavor gets stronger and the texture becomes chewier. I usually let them sit, uncovered, for several hours before serving. Chewiness and pumpkin flavor are even stronger on day 2.
- Store in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 1 week.
Notes
- Make Ahead & Freezing Instructions: You can make the cookie dough and chill it in the refrigerator for up to 3 days. Allow to come to room temperature, then continue with step 4. Baked cookies freeze well up to 3 months. You can also freeze the cookie dough balls for up to 3 months before baking. It’s best to freeze them without the cinnamon-sugar coating. When you are ready to bake, remove the dough balls from the freezer, let sit for 30 minutes, preheat the oven, and then roll in the cinnamon-sugar topping. Here are my tips for how to freeze cookie dough.
- Special Tools (affiliate links): Glass Mixing Bowls | Whisk | Rubber Spatula | Baking Sheets | Silicone Baking Mats or Parchment Paper | Medium Cookie Scoop | Cooling Rack
- Pumpkin: Squeeze as much of the moisture out of the pumpkin puree as you can before adding it to the cookie dough. I simply squeeze the puree with paper towels. See photo in the post for a visual. This will help produce a less cakey cookie. Less moisture is a good thing here! Measure 6 Tablespoons AFTER the pumpkin has been squeezed/blotted. Do not use pumpkin pie filling.
- Pumpkin Pie Spice: You can find pumpkin pie spice in the baking aisle of most grocery stores or make your own homemade pumpkin pie spice. If you don’t have either and want to use individual spices, use 1/4 teaspoon each: ground ginger, ground nutmeg, ground cloves, and ground allspice. This is in addition to the 1 and 1/2 teaspoons of cinnamon—you will still add that.
- Chilled Dough: If you are chilling the pumpkin cookie dough for longer than 30 minutes, the cookie dough will likely have to sit on the counter at room temperature for at least 15 minutes before scooping/rolling because it will be quite cold and solid. The amount of time it needs to sit at room temperature depends on how long the dough has chilled. If I chill my cookie dough for around 24 hours, I let it sit at room temperature for about 30 minutes.
- Bigger Batch: Cookie recipe can easily be doubled by doubling each ingredient. Chill the cookie dough for 45 minutes.
- White Chocolate Chips: Feel free to leave these out or replace with chocolate chips, butterscotch chips, or cinnamon chip morsels.
- Be sure to check out my top 5 cookie baking tips AND these are my 10 must-have cookie baking tools.
Reader Comments and Reviews
Not for me….not sweet enough and I didn’t care for the consistency.
Extremely good cookies! I kicked up the spice level a little.
I’ll first day really delicious cookies! Right out of the oven after cooling they are great so I’m sure they’ll be even better tomorrow. My only issue is even after blotting the puree several times, they are still pretty cakey. Any more tips for that?
Hi Mary, we’re so glad you enjoyed the cookies! How did you measure your flour? Be sure to spoon and level (or use a kitchen scale) to ensure the flour isn’t overmeasured, which can cause the cookies to be a bit cakey/dry. Othwerwise, be sure to really blot out that pumpkin—you’ll be surprised how much water you can remove!
Made this tonight & hubs loved them! I did take a double layer of paper towels and spread the pumpkin on them, waited for the excess liquid to puddle (about 15-20 mins) then took a blunt-edged spatula & it scraped beautifully off into my bowl. Since we love lots of flavor, I added nutmeg, mace & ginger to the mix. Also, doubled the cinnamon in the sugar dip. Lastly, I added cinnamon chips cause that it what I had on hand. Will be making this many, many times. Thank you for a wonderful recipe! We are addicted to your baking addiction site!
Came out perfect. I wouldn’t change a thing. I did not have white chips, but they would be great with this wonderful cookie.
YUCKO!! Don’t bothere with these …. followed instructions to a T…they are terrible!! And a HALF CUP OF SUGAR FOR ROLLING THE BALLS OF DOUGH IS A TOTAL WASTE …
t
I love the cookies, but I have to agree with you about the half cup of sugar and 1 teaspoon of cinnamon for rolling being too much. I have a lot left. But heck, time for cinnamon toast.
My son made these for his office potluck. He made a double recioe which yielded about 25 cookies. They were a big hit!! They definitely have a stronger flavor the next day. Not sure why someone said they were bland because they were full of flavor. He did add the white chocolate chips which lent a creamy taste but not necessary. Excellent cookie- this is a keeper!
These cookies taste great and the flavor was better the second day as mentioned in the recipe. In my opinion they are very similar to a softer molasses cookie ( maybe because I used dark brown sugar) , which I love, but they don’t have the little outside crisp of a snickerdoodle.
I doubled the recipe to start with. Used 1 T of vanilla, 1 T. cinnamon and 1 T. of pumpkin spice. Excellent. Everybody loved them.
I have made these double batch previously, and they did in fact go very quickly. Universally loved for sure. I am making a double double batch now, and had to use sweet potato for half of it. I have heard that is a good sub. I am very glad I found this recipe. PS, I have utilized many of your making a great cookie tips, and they do make a big difference for the turnout. I used to avoid making cookies due to them never turning out right, and they were never consistent. I have changed that now with these tips. My family is happy about it also. Thank you for helping with building my confidence in baking.
Thank you so much for your kind words, Wendy!
I’m sorry but this recipe stank. It was a waste of time and resources. It came out tasting very bland. It wasn’t worth my time. I appreciate your attempts to make a good recipe and help others, but this one is not it.
I am obsessed!! These did NOT last in my home. These taste like fall if fall had a taste. Perfect chewy airy flavorful cookie.
I baked a double batch of these to sell in my farm stand and they were a huge hit. 2 cookies for $1. I received many messages of how much they were enjoyed. I printed the recipe and will definitely bake them again and again.
Incredible! Everyone loves them.
No egg?
Hi Sheila, correct, there is enough pumpkin in this recipe that it takes the place of the egg as a binder.
How do I get pumpkin purée?
Can I make this from a Long Island cheese pumpkin? If so… how?
Hi Taylor! We usually buy it canned, but other readers have reported making fresh pumpkin puree this way: https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/pumpkin-puree-recipe-1922629
Love these cookies! I have extra purée how should I store it ?
Hi Beth! Leftover pumpkin puree can be put in a container and stored in the refrigerator. Here’s recipes to make with leftover pumpkin puree!
The texture of these was awesome. But i would strongly replacing the cinnamon with more pumpkin pie spice. Maybe it’s because I didn’t use the white chocolate chips but there wasn’t a lot of taste. Maybe if I wait till tomorrow, like the author said, the taste will be stronger. Otherwise I really nice cookie!
I’m about to try these for the first time, and I’m curious. Why don’t these use cream of tartar like the regular snickerdoodles? Could I swap it in?
Hi Heidi, Cream of tartar is usually used in traditional snickerdoodles– helps with leavening and adds a little tang. It’s not necessary in this pumpkin variation though.
These cookies are always a hit when I bring them to parties during the fall. I was wanting to make a batch that is gluten free, would changing the flour to almond flower completely change the way the cookies bake?
Hi Caroline, we don’t recommend almond flour as it has very different baking properties and is not always a 1:1 swap. We haven’t tested it, but you might have success experimenting with a gluten-free all-purpose flour like Bob’s Red Mill or Cup4Cup. If you give anything a try, we’d love to know how it goes for you!
Yum! Could you make this recipe into cookie bars? What would the baking time be?
Hi Lisa, we can’t see why not! We’re unsure of the exact bake time. You can use the baking time and directions from these M&M cookie bars as a guide.
Amazing flavor and texture. I made my own pumpkin pie spice with the spices listed by Sally. I have made 2 batches in 2 days to share with friends and coworkers. Very easy and quick recipe. This is another great recipe from Sally (I have been baking mostly from this website for about 10 years now!).
Hi Sally these sound wonderful I wanted to know if they have crisp edges and soft chewy centers? Thank you!
Hi Peggy, these cookies are mostly chewy, but the edges get a slight crisp to them. Hope you enjoy them!
Made these and they were a hit! Blotting the pumpkin is a pain, but worth it. I ended making mine 2 tbsp and stuffing the dough with pumpkin spice soft caramels before rolling it in the topping. (I also added some pumpkin spice to the cinnamon sugar.) The Carmel gave it that little something extra, while also added a chewy component. Definitely recommend
This recipe is amazing!! My family loves it. My friend wants me to make some for her, but she’s allergic to cinnamon. What would be the best way of making these without cinnamon? Thank you!!!
Hi Maia, the flavor profile will change a bit, but you could replace the cinnamon with more pumpkin pie spice or any other warm spices like cloves, nutmeg, ginger, or all spice.
Pumpkin Pie Spice has cinnamon in it, so maybe not that option!
We all loved the Pumpkin Choc. Chip Cookies, especially my 6 yr. Old grand daughter, Baylor. It made so many to share with my daughter’s office, teachers, etc.
Can’t wait to do the pumpkin snickerdoodle cookies! Baylor can measure everything perfectly. We have such fun making memories!
Hi Sally, Can these be rolled out and made using cookie cutters?
Hi Michelle, this dough is not suited for cut outs and won’t hold its shape, but you could use our best sugar cookies recipe and add 1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice.
Good idea!!
I doubled the recipe and made the dough the night before baking. I followed the directions exactly. After baking and cooling they looked exactly like the picture. I took 72 cookies to a church fellowship and returned with 6 cookies. They went wild over them—simply delicious! This will now be in the fall cookie rotation! Great recipe and great instructions. Love your recipes! Thank you!
These are delicious and worth the extra effort to blot the moisture from the pumpkin. I’m definitely adding these to my cookie repertoire! Sally’s cookbooks are also always worth the purchase – well written and easy to follow delicious recipes!
I made these last night and they are divine!!! It’s like taking a bite of fall. I think they’re my favorite cookies now. Thank you!!
So incredibly scrumptious. A huge hit at every autumn gathering.