"THE" PUMPKIN CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES

(p.s. after yesterday's post i got a few requests for my pumpkin bread recipe. i'll get that together right quick. in the meantime . . . this!)

last year i shared a pretty great recipe for pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. they weren't "theeeee" pumpkin chocolate chip cookies, but they were still pretty great. (you'll have to read that post for the back story, it's involved). 

not even three weeks after i posted that recipe, i got an email from my friend rachel, who'd gotten an email from her sister sarah, who said that her mom had said that finally she could share the super duper top secret ultra hush-hush famous stratford pumpkin chocolate chip cookie recipe--the recipe that we all obsessed over for years and years and years--with the world at large. i about died and immediately made four batches. 

that's maybe a slight exaggeration but you've come to expect that here by now.

the difference between regular pumpkin chocolate chip cookies and these pumpkin chocolate chip cookies is enormous. like red vines vs twizzlers. yes, twizzlers are amazing, but red vines are for grown ups. this recipe remains, to this day, the very best cookie of my very entire life, i really think you'll enjoy it. 

(by this time in my career as a human i'm starting to feel rather like an expert in all the things chocolate chip, which actually is really rather nice. like a distinctive honor of some kind, possibly a knighthood!?)

so, right. 

"the" pumpkin chocolate chip cookies     !!!

recipe straight from the horse's mouth (sister stratford looks nothing like a horse)

wet ingredients

2 eggs

3/4 cups canola oil (i'll usually do a half cup instead)

1/4 cup molasses

2 cups sugar

1 can of pumpkin (about a cup and a half) (my sources tell me libby's is best)

1 1/2 tsp vanilla

dry ingredients

3 1/2 cups flour

1 1/2 tsp cinnamon*

1 1/2 tsp nutmeg*

(*alternatively you could use 1T pumpkin pie spice, or, if you're me, 1T straight up cinnamon, cause that's how i roll)

1 1/2 tsp salt

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1 1/2 tsp baking soda

as many chocolate chips as you need, spiritually.  (milk chocolate. guittard are best.)

mix wet and dry ingredients until smooth, then drop by the spoonful onto your cookie sheet using a scoop or large spoon. bake at 400 degrees F for 10-12 minutes, or until the middle of the cookie feels firm to the touch.

these make a light, cake-y, highly addictive cookie. and please note also that these will bake up looking exactly the way they looked as lumps of dough on your cookie sheet, so if aesthetics are a priority, you're gonna want to put some real effort into a more artful form of plopping. i forget this most of the time and thus mine usually look a little like cow pies.

enjoy! 

and thank you, sister stratford! :)

p.s. the very best chocolate chip cookie or ever in existence

(according to actual popular vote.)