Pumpkin Snickerdoodle Cookies

Fall is here. You can feel it in the mornings — that edge in the air that wasn't there last week, like someone opened a window in the sky and let October start leaking in. The construction site is better in fall. The heat breaks, the humidity drops, and you can work a full day without feeling like you're being slow-cooked. My crew picks up the pace. We've got three houses in various stages of framing and I want them all under roof before the first hard rain, which in Kentucky can come anytime after mid-October.

Clay's football season is rolling. Bryan Station is 3-1, and Clay is getting noticed — the Lexington Herald-Leader ran a blurb about him in the high school football roundup, called him "a disruptive force at middle linebacker." I cut it out and put it on the refrigerator. Connie said that was excessive. I said that the first time a Hensley appears in a newspaper for something other than a mining accident or an obituary, it goes on the refrigerator. She didn't argue.

This week I'm making chili. Not hot dog chili — real chili. There's a distinction and I made it three weeks ago and I'm going to make it again because people keep conflating them and it bothers me the way incorrect tool usage bothers me, which is to say deeply and disproportionately.

Craig's chili — not Betty's, mine, this one I developed myself: brown two pounds of ground chuck in a Dutch oven. Don't drain the fat — the fat is flavor. Add a diced onion, four cloves of garlic, and cook until soft. Then: two cans of diced tomatoes (or a quart of your own stewed tomatoes if you froze them in August, which I did), a can of tomato paste, two cans of kidney beans (drained and rinsed — I know some people say beans don't belong in chili but those people are from Texas and they're wrong), two tablespoons of chili powder, a tablespoon of cumin, a teaspoon of smoked paprika, a teaspoon of oregano, salt, pepper, and a splash of bourbon. The bourbon is my addition. Betty didn't put bourbon in chili because Betty didn't drink bourbon. I do, and it adds a warmth and depth that rounds out the heat.

Simmer it low for at least two hours. Three is better. Four is ideal. The longer it cooks, the more the flavors marry, and by the time it's done, the chili has gone from a pot of ingredients to a unified thing — a thing that is more than its parts, which is what all good cooking aspires to be and what most cooking only occasionally achieves.

I serve it with cornbread and shredded cheese and diced onion and sour cream. Clay eats it with corn chips because Clay dips corn chips in everything, including things that don't need corn chips, which is most things. Connie eats it plain because Connie is a purist about chili and a contrarian about toppings. I eat it with all the toppings because I made it and I'll eat it however I want.

Fall chili on a cool evening with the windows open and the sound of crickets fading as the season turns. That's the meal. That's the moment. Some weeks are just food and weather and family and that's enough. That's always enough.

The chili takes care of dinner — it always does — but there’s a window on a cool fall evening after the bowls are cleared when the night isn’t quite finished and something sweet belongs on the table. Connie asked me last year what I was going to do about dessert and I told her the chili was the dessert, and that went over about as well as you’d expect. So this fall I planned ahead. Pumpkin snickerdoodles: soft, spiced, and unapologetically seasonal — they match the evening the same way a good chili does, which is to say they taste exactly like October.

Prep Time: 20 minutes | Cook Time: 12 minutes | Total Time: 32 minutes (plus 30 minutes chill time) | Servings: 24 cookies

Ingredients

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon cream of tartar
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup light brown sugar, packed
1/2 cup pure pumpkin puree (not pumpkin pie filling)
1 large egg yolk
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
For the cinnamon-sugar coating:
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon

Instructions

Whisk dry ingredients. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and cloves. Set aside.
Cream butter and sugars. In a large bowl using a hand mixer or stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the softened butter, granulated sugar, and brown sugar together on medium-high speed until light and fluffy, about 2–3 minutes.
Add pumpkin and egg. Add the pumpkin puree, egg yolk, and vanilla extract to the butter mixture. Beat on medium speed until fully combined, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed. The mixture may look slightly curdled — that’s normal.
Combine wet and dry. Add the flour mixture to the wet ingredients and mix on low speed just until a soft dough forms. Do not overmix.
Chill the dough. Cover the bowl and refrigerate the dough for at least 30 minutes. This step is important — pumpkin adds moisture and chilling prevents the cookies from spreading too thin.
Preheat oven. When ready to bake, preheat your oven to 375°F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
Make the coating. In a small shallow bowl, stir together the 1/4 cup granulated sugar and 1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon for rolling.
Portion and roll. Scoop the dough into balls about 1 1/2 tablespoons each (a medium cookie scoop works well). Roll each ball in the cinnamon-sugar coating until evenly covered, then place on the prepared baking sheets about 2 inches apart.
Bake. Bake for 11–13 minutes, until the edges are just set and the tops look slightly underdone. They will continue to firm up on the pan.
Cool. Let the cookies cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack. They should be soft and slightly chewy in the center. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Nutrition (per serving)

Pumpkin Snickerdoodle Cookies — The Fall Dessert That Earns Its Place on the Same Table as the Chili