Pumpkin oatmeal cookies are chewy and a little bit crispy, with the perfect amount of pumpkin spice flavor. Make this delicious and cozy fall cookie anytime you’re craving pumpkin!.
Have you been feeling in a fall mood yet? Here in Arizona it stays pretty warm through most of the beginning of fall. But being originally from the midwest I can’t help but start thinking about baked apple, warm sweaters and pumpkin bread.
These chewy pumpkin oatmeal cookies are soft with just the right amount of pumpkin spice flavor. So it means we can start fall a little early whether the leaves are changing or not.
If you prefer your pumpkin cookies a little more on the cakey side, try my soft pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. The cookies I’m sharing today have oatmeal which gives them more of a chewy texture like these pumpkin snickerdoodles. Or mix it all up and make a no-bake pumpkin spice rice krispie treat!
Ingredients for pumpkin oatmeal cookies
- Butter-softened, unsalted butter is preferred so your cookies don’t end up too salty. If you use salted butter don’t add the salt below
- White sugar
- Brown sugar
- Egg
- Vanilla– use the good stuff, not imitation if you can
- Pumpkin– canned or fresh pureed- blot away some of the moisture with a paper towel before adding this ingredient to the dough.
- Flour
- Rolled oats– Sometimes also called old-fashioned oats. Quick oats can be substituted, but the cookies will lose some of the chewy texture.
- Baking soda
- Cinnamon– pumpkin pie spice can be substituted spoonful for spoonful for the cinnamon and nutmeg.
- Nutmeg
- Salt– only if using unsalted butter
- Chocolate chips– (optional)
How To Make These Pumpkin Cookies! (With Optional Chocolate Chips)
- Cream together the softened butter, brown sugar and white sugar.
- Add the egg and vanilla to the dough and mix, then add the pumpkin to the dough and mix again.
- In a separate bowl mix together the dry ingredients such as flour, rolled oats, and spices, then add these ingredients to the dough.
- Fold in the chocolate chips to the dough (nuts or cranberries can also be substituted)
- Chill the dough for 30 minutes, then portion our dough into cookies on the pan lined with parchment paper.
- Bake in a 350-degree oven for 20-25 minutes. Enjoy!
The trick for making these pumpkin cookies extra chewy
One of the things that can turn these cookies into more of a cakey cookie then chewy is too much moisture.
While the oats do absorb quite a bit of the moisture in this recipe, sometimes the pumpkin holds too much moisture. It can actually vary from pumpkin to pumpkin how much moisture is inside!
Blotting the pumpkin on a paper towel removes that excess moisture and can result in a more chewy pumpkin cookie.
You can use canned pumpkin purree, or even your own fresh
These pumpkin pie frozen bites give you all the flavor of pumpkin pie in a cute little frozen bite. This recipe is fun for kids too! Or start with a cake mix and make these delicious Pumpkin Cookies with Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting with the kids!
My pumpkin cookies are spreading too much!
Like most butter-based cookie doughs, chilling the dough can be super important to helping keep the cookies from spreading too much. Chilling the dough helps the butter start to become a little more solid again within the dough.
If your butter is too soft, your cookies might spread a little extra. You can put the dough in the fridge for longer than 30 minutes, in the freezer, or even pop the whole pan full of balls of cookie dough in the freezer before baking. Cooling the dough a little extra can help save a batch of cookies that are spreading too much.
Love fall desserts? Check out my cozy apple crisp pizza, apple walnut cake or apple cider doughnut cake. Or my giant list of my favorite pumpkin desserts has lots of ideas too!
Oatmeal Pumpkin Cookies
Equipment
- Oven
- parchment paper
- Silicone spatula
- Measuring cups and spoons
- Large Mixing Bowl
- Medium sized mixing bowl
- Cookies scoop (1 1/2 tablespoons dough)
Ingredients
- ½ cup butter softened
- ½ cup white sugar
- ½ cup brown sugar
- 1 egg
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- ½ cup pumpkin puree- blotted blot the pumpkin with a paper towel, see notes for more details.
- 1 cups flour
- ¾ cup rolled oats sometimes these are called "old fashioned oats"
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoons cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon nutmeg
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- ½ cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350F. Layer a cookie sheet with parchment paper and set aside.
- In a large mixing bowl cream together the butter and the white and brown sugar.
- Add the egg and vanilla to the butter and sugar mixture until mixed. Then stir in the pumpkin to the wet batter.
- In a medium bowl mix together the flour, oatmeal, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt.
- Stir the dry flour and oatmeal mixture into the wet pumpkin batter a little at a time just until a dough forms and all their is no visable flour.
- Fold in the chocolate chips into the cookie dough.
- Chill the dough for 30 minutes in the refridgerator.
- Drop batter with a cookie scoop by the spoonful onto the cookie sheet covered in parchment paper.
- Bake for 18-21 minutes until cookies are soft and chewy, then enjoy!
Notes
- The butter should be soft enough if you press your finger into it, there is an indentation. Try chopping it into 8-12 pieces to speed up the softening, and then leaving it on the counter to soften for 5-10 minutes.
- These aren’t super chocolatey cookies to let the pumpkin spice flavors and chewiness of the oatmeal shine. If you prefer more chocolate add a little more chocolate chips to the batter.
- You can also substitute nuts for the chocolate chips, or leave them out entirely. Chopped walnuts or chopped pecans are both delicious in these cookies. I also like dried cranberries in this cookie.
- The most common standard-sized cookie scoops use about 1 1/2 tablespoons of dough. If scoops with a spoon, measure the first dough ball and then make the rest about the same size.
Nutrition
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Comments & Reviews
Ann says
I don’t see in the notes about blotting the pumpkin.
Kristy Richardson says
I talk about it in the article, I recommend it. Blot the pumpkin before adding it to the cookie dough for a chewier cookie. Different cans of pumpkin have different amounts of water, and fresh pumpkin puree has even more water than canned generally. Blotting the pumpkins will give you a more consistently chewy cookie no matter the water content in your particular batch of pumpkin. Hope you enjoy! -Kristy