Brown Butter Pumpkin Cookies w/ Maple Glaze
A soft-centered brown butter cookie with a perfect chewy outer shell topped with a maple infused silky cream cheese glaze
FALL in love with these cookies:
The First Recipe of Fall has high set levels of criteria it has to meet to be worthy of the title, “The First Recipe of Fall”. This cookie recipe hit every single point. Brown Butter, Pumpkin, Maple, and Cinnamon.
All wrapped up into one beautifully harmonized bite.
These cookies have the smallest measurements of ingredients and I swear it makes the biggest difference in flavor.
They melt in your mouth after giving you the most addicting chewy bite. It truly is the best of both worlds.
AND … they don’t get hard after one day out of the oven. (the beauty of a cornstarch cookie :))
Browning Butter:
The dreaded words of a beautiful recipe…Browned Butter
BUT IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE
It really is simple, it just takes some foresight and time.
The premise of browning butter is simply toasting the milk solids from the butter. This, in turn, will evaporate some of the water content in your butter.
The only thing you have to be careful about is making sure not to burn the butter because this will leave a bitter taste in your baking. Careful is a strong word though because it is much harder than you think to burn this.
As long as you are paying attention to the state of your butter you are going to know when it is all toasty and delicious.
To scoop or To roll?
Taste-wise, it makes no difference. But appearance-wise, you get a slightly different look.
Now I know, this is super nitpicky, but for my type-A friends bringing this as their contribution to the 5-course meal they have been stressing about for weeks since it was meticulously placed on their Google Calendar, it makes a difference.
As featured, to the left of the picture above, is a cookie that was scooped with a cookie scoop.
And to the right is a cookie that was scooped into my CLEAN (that’s important) hands and rolled into a perfect (or close to) ball.
The scooped cookie has a texture on the top that resembles a gorgeous oatmeal cookie and the rolled cookie has more delicate cracks on the top.
Either way, they are both gorgeous, so it is up to the baker (that’s you 😉
Important Ingredient Details:
Pumpkin puree: DO NOT buy the pumpkin pie filling, make sure it is 100% pumpkin
Espresso powder: DO NOT use coffee grounds, it will not taste good, espresso is finer and the flavor incorporates easily.
Milk: You can use any milk you have on hand, can be plant-based or whole. Won’t make a difference
Brown Butter Pumpkin Cookies with Maple Cream Cheese Glaze
Ingredients
Cookie Dough
- 1 cup butter salted or unsalted
- 1 1/2 cups light brown sugar
- 1 large egg yolk
- 1 1/2 tbsp maple syrup
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 1/3 cup pumpkin puree
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 1 1/2 tsp pumpkin pie spice
- 1 tsp espresso powder
- 2 1/3 cups flour
- 1/2 tsp cornstrach
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 3/4 tsp baking powder
Maple Cream Cheese Glaze
- 4 oz cream cheese softened
- 3 tbsp maple syrup
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 cup powdered sugar
- 2-4 tbsp milk
Instructions
Browning Butter:
- Browning Your Butter:– Place all butter into a stainless steel saucepan and bring to a simmer. Continue simmering for around 6 minutes until you see, smell, and hear a change in the butter. The color should darken and it will smell nutty. Remove from the heat and put into a glass bowl to cool for 30 minutes, until room temperature but still liquid.
Cookie Dough:
- Set oven to 350 degrees F and prep 2 cookie sheets with parchment paper
- In a large bowl, whisk together cooled browned butter with brown sugar until combined.
- Add in the egg yolk, maple sugar, vanilla, pumpkin, salt, cinnamon, pumpkin pie spice, and espresso powder. Whisk until everything is well combined and smooth
- Grab a spatula and fold in the flour, cornstarch, baking soda, and baking powder. Only fold until all of the flour is saturated (Do not overmix)
- Wrap the bowl in cling wrap and place in the fridge for 30 minutes. (if you want a thinner cookie you can skip this step)
- After the cookie dough has chilled, scoop balls (about 2 1/2 tbsp) onto lined cookie sheets and bake for 11-12 minutes. Do not overbake, the dough should not brown much. Let set on the pan for 5 minutes. Then transfer to a wire cooling rack.
Maple Cream Cheese Glaze:
- Beat softened cream cheese, maple syrup, salt, and one tablespoon of milk together till combined
- Add powdered sugar and beat until combined
- Add tbsps of milk until desired glaze consistency
- Drizzle glaze over cooled cookies
- Eat one right now. (Store leftovers, if any, in an airtight container in the fridge)