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, 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
Just a quick question. Isn’t it cream of tarter that makes a snickerdoodle a snickerdoodle? This seems more like a pumpkin sugar cookie.
Hi Jeannie, 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.
Can brown butter be used in these cookies?
Hi Cate! Brown butter would be delicious in these cookies.
Did this recipe used to have cinnamon chips? I can no longer find your delicious cinnamon chip pumpkin cookie recipe, I get an errror when trying to get to the site.
Hi Amanda, you can absolutely use cinnamon chips here in place of the white chips. Enjoy!
This recipe was AMAZING!! Loved it so much!
hi! did the amount of brown sugar in this recipe change? i could have sworn it used to be 100g of each brown and granulated!
Hi Nik, this particular recipe has not changed over the years.
These are really great cookies!! I adore snickerdoodles, and these are a good variation. So glad I used up that little bit of leftover pumpkin. I was afraid I’d squeezed out too much moisture but they’re perfect IMHO. And yes, I waited overnight to try one. Yum. ; )
Could you use butterscotch chips
Hi Cindi, absolutely! That would be delicious.
I love the flavor and texture of these cookies. I can’t say that I taste the pumpkin with all the other spices but it’s such a good cookie I don’t care! I will make them over and over again.
These are my favorite pumpkin cookies! I love to share them because they are always a hit.
Every time I make them I worry I’ve blotted the pumpkin either too much or not enough. It would be useful to know how much unblotted pumpkin puree is needed to get 6 tablespoons.
i agree! i feel like i ended up using almost my entire can of purée for 86g
The flavor of these cookies was delicious but the texture seemed a bit off. The dough was extremely dry and hard to work with. I’ve seen some other comments and replies that mentioning spooning and leveling the flour, but I did that. Maybe next time I shouldn’t squeeze out as much moisture out of the pumpkin?
Hi Claire, you can certainly try leaving a bit more moisture in the pumpkin for next time. Be careful not to over bake, either, as that can dry out the cookies. Thank you for giving these a try!
These cookies are like little pumpkin pillows! Whether you like them with or without white chocolate chips, they are delicious!!!
This recipe is amazing! My friends are always asking when my next batch will be
Love this recipe..I have been baking for 50 some years and never made a snickerdoodle…these are very flavor ful…even added a handful of raisins to them…I like how these turned out
Hi Sally- I am a huge fan and only bake from your website… everything is always fantastic! I tried these cookies for the first time and while the tops of the cookies look picture perfect, the bottoms on most burnt. Any ideas as to why that happened!? Never had that before!
Hi Annmarie, happy to help troubleshoot. There are a few things that could cause this. One could simply be that they were a tad overbaked, and next time try taking them out a bit earlier. Also, your oven could be running a bit hot–we recommend an oven thermometer to check. Finally, did you bake them on silicone baking mats or parchment paper? And were your baking sheets light- or dark-colored? While you can use either, we find that cookies do best on silicone baking mats and light baking sheets. Hope this helps for next time!
First time using Pumpkin Puree in a recipe and these were certainly a great intro to a perfect fall flavour. I kind of missed the crunch I’d expect from a snickerdoodle but having a soft and delicious cookie more than made up for it (and honestly, it might be my fault for not blotting the puree for long enough before adding it to the wet ingredients.)
Great recipe, thanks for giving me a new Fall fav!
We’re so glad you enjoyed these, Matt!
Perfection! Easy to make and so very good!
This recipe was super fantabulous and deliciouso! WE COULDN’T EVEN WAIT FOR THEM TO COOOOOOOOOOL CAUSE THEY WERE THE BOMB DOT COM. GOTTA HAND IT TO YA SALLY, YOU KNOW WHATS UP!!!!!!!
These are the BEST fall cookie!!!
Question for Sally, could I substitute coconut oil and almond flour to make these safe for my nephew with allergies? Would you recommend extra baking powder or anything? Thx!!
Hi Barbara, A few readers reported success using solid coconut oil, although we haven’t tried it ourselves (and the flavor would of course be different). You could also try a plant-based butter. 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!
I discovered this recipe 2 years ago and these are now our favorite fall cookie! I don’t even like pumpkin treats, and I LOVE these! Instead of the white chocolate chips, I use the Hershey’s cinnamon chips and they are fire!! Thanks for the fabulous recipe!!
Question :
Can you stuff these with biscoff cookie butter ???
Hi Kristina, we haven’t tested it, but you can certainly give it a try. You can use our Nutella crinkle cookies post as a guide for how to stuff the cookies. Let us know if you try it!
Hello Sally! Do you think it is possible to substitute the pumpkin with sweet potatoes? Thanks!
Hi Isabella, I haven’t tested it to be certain. Let me know if you try it!
Great recipe, made it several times so far. Try adding some cream of tartar as that really helps give the cookies and even more amazing texture. I doubled the recipe so added about half a teaspoon.
I’m not a pumpkin spice person, but I made these for work and they not only disappeared in record time, at least three people asked for the recipe. So easy and delicious (and I never hesitate to spread. the word about this website!).
I found this recipe a few years ago and it makes perfect cookies every time! Everyone loves these cookies I’ve used canned pumpkin puree, homemade puree, regular butter, non-dairy butter, and it comes out perfect every time! I will say that I’ve never blotted the excess moisture off the puree and they come out light and soft. I appreciate the measurements in weight, that is really important to getting consistenly good cookies. Thanks again!
I’m obsessed with these cookies! I’m already planning on making another batch. The texture was exactly what I look for in snickerdoodles – they were so soft on the inside but a little crispy on the outside from the sugar – and the pumpkin spice flavor really shone through. I made a few small changes – firstly, I used margarine instead of butter, and since I only had fresh ginger and whole cloves, I simmered the margarine with them for a little while before straining (using a little extra margarine to make up for what I assumed would burn off) in an attempt to infuse the flavors. For the coating I only used 1/2 of what was called for but still ended up with about half of it left, so I recommend reducing the amount. I also used homemade pumpkin purée that I made from roasted pumpkin, which was already quite thick, so I didn’t bother blotting the purée. Thank you so much for this recipe!
Sadly, this recipe didn’t do it for me. Maybe I squeezed too much moisture out of the pumpkin or didn’t spoon/ measure of flour properly, but the dough cracked when I rolled it into balls. They cracked severely during baking and didn’t resemble or taste like snickerdoodles or remotely resemble the photos. I also found them a bit too sweet for my liking. Oh well!!
Hi Lmel, thank you for giving these cookies a try! While some cracks in the tops of the baked cookies are normal, it sounds like there was a lack of moisture in the dough if it was cracking during the rolling process. Be sure to spoon and level your flour to ensure it isn’t over measured. Thanks again for trying these!
Made these before and they were great! Made again and they came out very dry and hard. Did I remove too much water from the pumpkin? Followed recipe exactly! Thx!!
Hi Cindy, How did you measure your flour? Be sure to spoon and level (or use a kitchen scale) to ensure the flour isn’t over measured, which can cause the cookies to be a bit cakey/dry.
I made this 4 times for family and friends. It was a perfect blend of pumpkin and classic snickerdoodle flavor. My family said it was the best snickerdoodles they have ever had. Highly recommend!
OMG these pumpkin snickeerdoodles are delicious. The warm spice flavour is perfect. They will not last long. Thanks for another great recipe!
You should nickname this recipe “mini donut cookies” because that’s exactly what they taste like. Thanks for another fantastic recipe!
I am so glad I found this recipe. I’ve never made such tasty, moist cookies before. I have diabetic relatives and would like to make these cookies and wonder how I could adapt the recipe to use applesauce possibly. Or maybe just a little less sugar. Any suggestions?
Hi Beck, we’re so glad you enjoyed these cookies! We don’t recommend swapping applesauce for the sugar, and while you can try reducing the amount of sugar, it does play an important role in the moisture, texture, and spread of the cookies. We’d start small, then reduce more/less for future batches.