Sugar Free Pumpkin Cookies
These delicious, bakery-style pumpkin cookies are one of my many odes to autumn (fall).
Cakey, soft, pumpkin-y (ok, not a word, but it should be!). And yummy. Oh, so yummy!
More like individual cakes than cookies really, these melt-in-your-mouth biscuits are perfect with a steaming cup of pumpkin spice latte or a simple cup of delicious tea. Un-iced, they are dairy free (you could ice them with sweetened coconut cream to keep them that way if you like!), using pumpkin puree and applesauce in place of butter. But you would never know it.
If you are not a big fan of pumpkin, I would choose the applesauce rather than more pumpkin puree option, as the taste is very very subtle that way. But if, like me, you are an orange-vegetable fanatic, I love the extra autumnal flavour that comes from using more!
While these are delicious all season long, and even through the winter, they would be particularly great served at Halloween. Just get yourself a few cacao nibs to add in little eyes, nose and draw on a mouth with more cacao nibs or by using a little black food colouring (ideally natural!) to colour some of the cream cheese frosting and pipe it on. Add a strip of mint leaf across the top for a teeny stem, and you’ve got pumpkin cookies in every sense of the word! 🙂 Similarly, you can use a bit of the black-coloured frosting to pipe on a spider’s web if you are skilled with a piping bag (read: more skilled than me). The sugar free answer to the most sugar laden season of them all!
For more ideas for Halloween, and for other holidays and celebrations, check out my Party Survival course for Low Sugar Families here.
Bakery-style pumpkin cookies with cream cheese icing - all sugar free!!
- 1 1/2 cups (210g) wholemeal flour
- 1 cup (140g) plain flour
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)
- 1 tsp ground cinnamon
- 2 tsp pumpkin pie spice
- pinch of salt
- 3/4 cups (170g) xylitol
- 1 tbsp rice syrup
- 1 cups (225g) pumpkin puree (you could use sweet potato or squash puree instead)
- 1/2 cup (110g) unsweetened applesauce (or more pumpkin puree)
- 1 egg
- 110 g (1/2 cup) room temperature cream cheese
- 2 tbsp softened butter
- 1/2 tsp pumpkin pie spice
- 1 tbsp xylitol
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Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/gas 4. Mix the flours, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and spices together. Stir in the salt and xylitol. Mix the rice syrup, pumpkin puree and egg in a separate bowl and stir into the dry ingredients until you have a soft, sticky dough. Scoop tablespoons of the mixture onto a baking tray, making sure to space them apart by a few centimetres. Bake in the preheated oven for 12-15 mins. Allow to cool completely.
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To make the icing, beat all of the icing ingredients together until smooth. Pipe or spread over the cooled cookies.
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