Soft and Chewy Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

October. The leaves are turning on Long Island, and the light has shifted to that particular golden quality that makes every afternoon feel like a painting and every morning feel like an apology for summer's departure. I love fall. I love it the way some people love spring — with the recognition that beauty and loss are the same thing, that the most gorgeous season is the one that is dying. English teachers understand this. We spend our lives teaching books about exactly this.

I made apple cake this week. Not apple pie — apple cake, which is a different animal entirely. Sylvia's apple cake was a dense, moist, cinnamon-heavy thing that used six apples and no decoration, because Sylvia believed that if a cake needed decoration, the cake had failed. The apples were from an orchard on the North Shore where I have been buying apples every October for twenty years. The farmer, an old Italian named Mr. Bianchi, saves the Cortlands for me because he knows I will buy twenty pounds and because I once told him that my mother's apple cake required Cortlands specifically, and he understood, because Italian men know that when a woman says a recipe requires a specific apple, you do not argue. You save the apples.

I brought apple cake to school. The English department devoured it in the faculty lounge between second and third period. Helen Marcowitz said, "October would not be October without your apple cake." I said, "October would still be October. It would just be worse." This is the kind of joke that lands with Helen, who has known me for twenty years and understands that my humor, like Marvin's, is dry and delivered with a straight face that suggests I am completely serious, which I mostly am.

At home, the fall rhythm has settled in. School, cooking, Shabbat, repeat. The weeks have a shape now — the urgency of the new school year has settled into routine, and routine is where I live best. Marvin reads in his recliner. I cook in the kitchen. The house is warm and smells like apples and cinnamon, and if there is a better combination of scents for a fall evening, I have not encountered it in fifty-nine years of autumns.

I wrote about apple cake on the blog — about the sacred September-to-November window when the apples are at their best and the cake is therefore at its best, and how this window is one of the things that makes living in the Northeast bearable, along with bagels and the New York Public Library and the particular pleasure of wearing a sweater for the first time after a long summer. Seasonal cooking is not a trend. It is a relationship. You wait for the apples. The apples arrive. You make the cake. Next year, you wait again. This is love.

The apple cake went to school, but the baking didn’t stop there — it never does once October takes hold of the kitchen. On the same afternoon I pulled Sylvia’s cake from the oven, I found myself reaching for the can of pumpkin I’d picked up at the market without any particular plan, and that is how these cookies happened: impulsively, cinnamon-scented, in the same warm kitchen that already smelled like apples. Marvin ate four before dinner and said nothing, which in our house is the highest compliment. These are the cookies I make when the week has been full and good and I want the house to stay warm for another hour.

Prep Time: 15 minutes | Cook Time: 13 minutes | Total Time: 30 minutes | Servings: 48 cookies

Ingredients

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
3/4 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
1 cup pure pumpkin puree (not pumpkin pie filling)
1 large egg
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips

Instructions

Preheat oven. Heat oven to 375°F (190°C). Line two large baking sheets with parchment paper and set aside.
Combine dry ingredients. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and salt. 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 on medium-high speed until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed.
Add wet ingredients. Add the pumpkin puree, egg, and vanilla extract to the butter mixture. Beat on medium speed until fully combined, about 1 minute. The mixture may look slightly curdled — that is normal.
Mix in dry ingredients. With the mixer on low, gradually add the flour mixture to the wet ingredients and mix until just combined. Do not overmix.
Fold in chocolate chips. Using a rubber spatula, fold in the chocolate chips until evenly distributed throughout the dough.
Portion the dough. Drop rounded tablespoons of dough onto the prepared baking sheets, spacing cookies about 2 inches apart. The dough will be soft and slightly sticky.
Bake. Bake for 11—13 minutes, until the edges are set and the tops look just barely done. The centers will appear soft — they will firm up as the cookies cool. Do not overbake.
Cool. Allow cookies to cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely. Store in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 5 days.

Nutrition (per serving)

Soft and Chewy Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies — Because October Deserves Something Sweet From the Oven