White Chocolate Pumpkin Snickerdoodles

These soft & chewy snickerdoodle cookies are full of pumpkin, white chocolate, and cinnamon sugar. You’re going to want a batch lying around for those chilly fall days. Warning: they disappear quickly!

Ingredients

1/2 cup (115g) unsalted butter
1/4 cup (50g) packed light or dark brown sugar
1 cup (200g) granulated sugar, divided
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
6 Tablespoons (86g) pumpkin puree (use the rest of the can in any of these recipes)
1 and 1/2 cups (190g) all-purpose flour (spoon & leveled)
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon, divided
1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice*
1/2 cup (90g) white chocolate chips or chunks

Instructions

Melt the butter in the microwave. In a medium bowl, whisk the melted butter, brown sugar, and 1/2 cup granulated sugar together until no brown sugar lumps remain. Whisk in the vanilla and pumpkin until smooth. Set aside.
In a large bowl, toss together the flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda, 1 and 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon and pumpkin pie spice. 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 white chocolate chips. They may not stick to the dough because of the melted butter, but do your best to have them evenly dispersed in the dough. Cover the dough and chill for 30 minutes or up to 3 days. Chilling the dough is imperative for this recipe.
Take the dough out of the refrigerator. Preheat the oven to 350°F (177°C). Line two large baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mats.
Roll the dough into balls, about 1.5 Tablespoons of dough each. Mix together the remaining 1/2 cup of granulated sugar and 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon. Roll each of the dough balls generously in the cinnamon-sugar mixture and arrange on 2 baking sheets. Slightly flatten the dough balls because the cookies will only slightly spread in the oven. The photo above shows what the cookie dough balls should look like before baking.
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 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 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 3. 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 topping. When you are ready to bake, remove the dough balls from the freezer, let sit for 30 minutes, preheat the oven, then roll into the cinnamon sugar topping. Here are my tips for how to freeze cookie dough.
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: Instead of pumpkin pie spice, you can use 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg, 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves, and 1/2 teaspoon allspice.
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 25 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.