I’m confident you’ll love these pumpkin chocolate chip cookies! I worked hard to create a chewy pumpkin cookie that’s not cakey like most pumpkin cookie recipes. Omitting the egg, using melted butter, and blotting the pumpkin guarantee these pumpkin cookies taste like my favorite chewy chocolate chip cookies with brilliant pumpkin spice flavor.
Sometimes you just need a chocolate chip cookie, especially when pumpkin spice season—I mean fall—takes over.
Out of all my pumpkin recipes, you’re looking at one of the best. Right up there with my great pumpkin pie recipe! Originally published in 2013, these pumpkin chocolate chip cookies are a constant hit with bakers around the world. I bake at least 3-4 batches each fall season and they ALWAYS put me in a fall state of mind. Sometimes I even replace the chocolate chips with chopped pecans or roll them in cinnamon sugar to yield pumpkin snickerdoodles!
These Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies Are:
- Soft-baked, but not as soft as a piece of cake
- Chewy
- Egg-free
- Buttery
- Perfectly spiced and you can use homemade pumpkin pie spice!
- Relatively quick—only 30 minutes to chill the dough
Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies Video
This is Not a Cakey Pumpkin Cookie
I have appreciation for all pumpkin cookies, but I definitely prefer chewy pumpkin cookies over cakey pumpkin cookies. My regular pumpkin cookies taste like soft & cakey muffin tops. They’re obviously good, but sometimes you crave a pumpkin cookie that has the same dense & chewy texture as a regular chocolate chip cookie.
I call this the “cakey pumpkin cookie problem.” When I began recipe testing today’s cookies, I was desperate to find a solution that would help guarantee a denser texture. And guess what? I finally solved it. You see, pumpkin is soft, mushy, and full of moisture. In fact, pumpkin puree is approximately 90% water by mass. (That’s what helps make pumpkin bread so moist!) But for cookies, excessive moisture = cakey texture. Think about cake batter or muffin batter—it’s a lot more wet than cookie dough, right? We actually want cookie dough to be sturdier and drier to produce denser, chewier cookies.
My 4 Tricks to Apply in this Recipe
- Blot the Pumpkin: This first trick is actually optional, but I find it remarkably useful when I make pumpkin oatmeal cookies, pumpkin crumb cake cookies, and pumpkin oatmeal cream pies. Using a paper towel, blot out some of the pumpkin’s moisture so all that’s left is the flavor. See photo below. Use the blotted pumpkin in the cookie dough.
- Melted Butter: As you know from chewy chocolate chip cookies, melted butter makes cookies ultra chewy. Instead of creaming butter and sugars together, start with melted butter and whisk in the sugars. You don’t need a mixer!
- Skip the Eggs: 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. Pumpkin replaces the eggs. If you’re looking for other egg-free baking recipes, give my shortbread cookies a try.
- Give it Time: Let the cookies cool on a cooling rack for awhile. They’re delicious warm from the oven, but I find both 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. That being said, this is an awesome make-ahead dessert recipe!
Chill for Only 30 Minutes
This pumpkin chocolate chip cookie dough is a little sticky. Chill for at least 30 minutes before rolling into balls and baking. The cookies only spread slightly in the oven, so slightly flatten out the cookie dough balls with the back of a spoon before baking.
Chewy Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Prep Time: 45 minutes
- Cook Time: 10 minutes
- Total Time: 1 hour, 10 minutes
- Yield: 18 cookies
- Category: Cookies
- Method: Baking
- Cuisine: American
Description
I’m confident you’ll love these pumpkin chocolate chip cookies! Omitting the egg, using melted butter, and blotting the pumpkin guarantee a chewier texture.
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 store-bought or homemade pumpkin pie spice
- 1/2 cup (90g) semi-sweet chocolate chips, plus a few extra for the tops
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 semi-sweet chocolate chips. 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 imperative 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.
- Scoop the dough, about 1.5 Tablespoons of dough per cookie, and roll each into balls. 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 with the back of a spoon when you take them out of the oven. If desired, press a few 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 even 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.
- Cookies stay fresh covered 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. Unbaked cookie dough balls freeze well up to 3 months. Bake frozen cookie dough balls for an extra minute, no need to thaw. 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.
- 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
I loved this recipe! First time I made it, cookies turned out perfectly. Second batch I actually split into two (one half with chocolate chip cookies, the other half with white chocolate chip cookies). The “normal” chocolate chip cookies did not spread but I found that the white chocolate chip cookies really thinned out and spread out. What would cause this?
Hi Katie, if the cookies were some the same batch of dough, with the chips being the only variable, it sounds like your oven may have some hot spots that are causing the cookies to bake unevenly. For next time, you can try rotating your baking sheet half way through bake time to encourage more even baking. Also, if you see the cookies starting to over spread, you can use a spoon to gently shape the cookies part way through bake time. You can watch Sally demonstrate this in the video for chewy chocolate chip cookies. Glad you’ve been enjoying this recipe!
These are the most amazing pumpkin chocolate chip cookies ever! I took the advice of rolling them in cinnamon sugar prior to baking. Exquisite crunchy texture on the outside, chewy inside. I’ll make these again and again. Thanks for the fabulous recipe!
Absolutely delicious!
I was skeptical but I tried this recipe. I did everything exactly as written. They turned out wonderful!!! These pumpkin type of cookies have never been my favorite because they are cake like. These are more like a chewy yummy chocolate chip cookie, which is just what I was hoping for. Thank you so much.
If using your home made pumpkin pie spice, do you still add cinnamon also
Yes, you will still add cinnamon in addition to pumpkin pie spice.
Best pumpkin chocolate chip recipe ever! They do not flatten and are delicious
Haven’t made these just yet but looking forward to them. I don’t have parchment paper or silicone mats. Has anyone had success without them? Maybe just by greasing the cookie sheet? Thank you 🙂
Hi Ali, we find greasing cookie sheets causes cookies to spread out too much. It should work in a pinch, though. We highly suggest silicone mats for cookie baking!
Thanks! I used the cooking spray and it wasn’t an issue 🙂
I baked the cookies for 12 minutes and next time I would do it for several minutes more. They have a very doughy texture, not at all like a classic chocolate chip cookie.
This was the first time I ever heard of blotting the pumpkin puree and I definitely took my time taking out all the moisture. These came out perfectly, they are now my favourite cookie recipe.
Being in Australia, it’s hard to get canned pumpkin puree, so i bought some diced butternut pumpkin, boiled and pureed it and then used that to make these cookies. I also used Healthy Baker Fodmap flour (1:1 ratio) and found the substitution worked well still. Delicious cookies – one of my friends described them as Christmas in a biscuit – am currently just doing batches of them (although mostly bc i bought 600g of diced pumpkin and that ends up being a fair amount of pureed pumpkin so now i’m just trying to use it all up )
These cookies may be my favorite cookies, but are closely matched with multiple other cookie recipes from your website. I love how they stay thick, and the soft, chewy texture, as well as their buttery, spiced pumpkin flavor makes them delicious. Before making these, I didn’t even know pumpkin cookies existed, but now have made three different varieties fro this website. Loved every cookie I’ve tried from this site.
I chose this recipe because it’s very much like my regular chocolate chip cookies. They came out quite nice. Next time I think I’ll skip cooling them after balling to see if they spread a little more. All in all, it was simple and yielded nice results.
I was looking for a not cakey recipe. I followed the directions exactly and was very disappointed. Not like a chocolate chip cookie texture at all! Fortunately my husband will eat anything so not wasted but it is soft and cakey.
I used mini semi sweet chips in the batter and they mixed in very well and then topped with full-size milk chocolate chips when they came out of the oven. I also used the bottom of a measuring cup to flatten the cookies before baking them they had a nice even spread and turned out perfect. Thank you for sharing this recipe.
Made these today to use up leftover pumpkin purée and they were delicious! Added 1/4 tsp of ground ginger, chilled the dough for 90 minutes and they came out perfect. Thanks for a great recipe Sally!
I tried this recipe, because I wanted to make something with pumpkin in it for November. We all decided that this is a definite keeper. Super good. I think I might also try them with raisins in place of the chocolate chips. Big warning: The dough is super good, too.
These cookies came out perfectly and I’m eating one of these as we speak! I heavily blotted the pumpkin with several paper towels and chilled for only 30 minutes. In lieu of pumpkin pie spice I included 1/4 tsp cloves, 1/4 tsp nutmeg, and 1/4 tsp ground ginger. The recipe yielded about 20 small cookies. Can’t wait to make these again soon!
Delicious – the blotting is key and I think recipes I’ve made before used way too much pumpkin. Batter was not wet at all which worried me and they didn’t spread at all in the oven but they are lovely.
These were just okay for me. It felt like something was missing….maybe not sweet enough, maybe not enough pumpkin or maybe I’m just used to the traditional pumpkin cookie I’ve always had but I don’t think I’d make these again especially since I had to chill the dough, and let them rest for so long. The flavor was not worth the extra steps in my opinion.
Hi Sally, this is always my go-to website for cookie recipes. I’ve made three of your pumpkin cookies before, and these ones were probably my favorite, not that the other ones weren’t delicious. Instead of mixing chocolate chips into the dough, I baked them without chocolate chips, and then pressed in either three large chocolate chips or a Hershey kiss after baking. Thanks for the recipe.
These are SO good! Easy to follow recipe, great result. Pumpkin & chocolate perfection!
These were soooo amazing!! Just baked them for my family and they’re going nuts over these❤️❤️
Thank you!
These were so easy to make and so delicious. I would say they have the texture of chewy Chips Ahoy cookies and the flavors of Fall. Perfect for our pre-Halloween potluck!
Wow! These are amazing cookies! I followed the recipe as written, and they came out perfectly. The flavour is incredible, as is the texture – not cakey, just soft & chewy. I baked on 2 racks at the same time, and the cookie sheet on the lower rack (about the lower-middle of the oven) have a soft, chewy texture with a slightly crispy bottom – perfection! Can’t wait to try your Chewy Pumpkin Oatmeal Chocolate Chip cookies!
Wow, these turned out great. I followed all the instructions including squeezing the moisture from the pumpkin.
Thank you. Am taking some for a hostess gift but had to eat one. Will make more.
These are amazing!!! I’ve made them 4 times in the past 2 weeks because they were delicious and because I wanted to see how many I could get out of the 15 oz can of pumpkin.
My 5 year old can’t get enough of them and honestly neither can any of us. Thanks so much for this one!!
I love these cookies! I made them for a bake sale and again for a party! They are perfection for this time of year (October). Can’t wait to make them again for Thanksgiving!
I am going to try to make them Gluten free for a Gluten Free Thanksgiving. oh, and I am debating making some breakfast cookies! Adding nuts and oatmeal.
Made these with my toddler today and she can’t get enough of them. Taste so soft and chewy. We didn’t have butter on hand and use 1/4c coconut oil instead. You gotta bake with your heart. I declare this my favorite recipe for pumpkin cookies by far.
Every other pumpkin based recipe I’ve read omits blotting the pumpkin puree, and I am so glad this recipe mentions it! I subbed regular flour for gluten free flour, and used 1/4 cup of golden Monkfruit sweetener, and 1/4 cup of coconut sugar in replacement of the granulated sugar. The cookies still turned out delicious, but I recommend that if you use gluten free flour (I used Bob’s red mill in the darker red bag) to not blot the pumpkin puree all the way. The inside of the cookies are perfect, however, the outside could use a bit more moisture.
As a real taste test, I had my boyfriend try a cookie as he’s very anti-Pumpkin Spice, and he really liked it! That’s a win in my book!
I also love how this recipe has a snickerdoodle like flavor to it versus being overly pumpkin and overly sweet. I’m so glad I stumbled upon this recipe and can’t wait to make it again in the future 🙂
I just baked pumpkin chocolate cookies in a skillet, since I LOVE regular chocolate chip cookies in there, but they turned out cakey. So when I read your recipe, and saw that you addressed this by getting rid of excess moisture in the pumpkin, and omitting the egg, I’d like to try your recipe in my iron skillet. Do you think it would work in there?
Hi Shawn, We haven’t tested this recipe as a skillet cookie but it should work. Let us know if you give it a try!
These are the best cookies I have ever made. I always follow Sally’s recipes to a T because she knows! Blot as much moisture out of the pumpkin as possible! It’s tedious but WORTH IT. I always bake a double batch simply because we cannot get enough of these delicious cookies! Thank you, Sally!
I used Bob’s Redmill 1:1 Gluten Free Flour. The texture was perfect, firm on the outside and chewy on the inside. But it hardly tasted like pumpkin! It was more like cinnamon chocolate chip cookies.
For the last batch of six cookies, I mixed in 1/4 of pumpkin (I didn’t blot it). Adding the extra pumpkin made it sooo tasty, but the texture was chewier. It was still good.
I’m glad I made these! Perfect for a cozy October.