Despite a lot of the somewhat recent hate towards pumpkin flavored foods, I still love pumpkin and pumpkin spices – especially in the fall. I’ve been toying with this pumpkin spice cookie recipe for a while now. I had all kinds of problems with the recipe when I started. The original cookies turned out so cakey that I actually just went ahead and made pumpkin cupcakes/muffins out of the dough!
Nonetheless, I wanted cookies and I over-corrected for the cakey-ness, by removing the eggs and baking soda from the recipe, which I knew were causing the cookies to rise too much. That time, I ended up with really dense cookies that didn’t really rise or spread out much. I ended up balancing the recipe by removing the eggs completely, but keeping some of the baking soda to get the cookies to spread out a bit. The results gave me this recipe that produced flatter cookies with a dense yet soft texture. I also found that I could add in any number of different ingredients to change the base flavor. My favorite additions so far were peanut butter chips and, separately, dried cranberries, which really show off the versatility of this recipe.
Makes 12 plain cookies at 159 calories each.
Pumpkin Spice Cookies Recipe Without Eggs

Homemade Pumpkin Spice Cookies.
Ingredients
- 1.5 cups of all purpose flour (500 calories)
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon (6 calories)
- 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger (2 calories)
- 1/4 teaspoon ground allspice (1 calorie)
- 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg (3 calories)
- 1/8 teaspoon ground clove (1 calorie)
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1 stick (8 tablespoons) of unsalted butter (800 calories)
- 3/4 cups of brown sugar (540 calories)
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract (24 calories)
- 1/4 cup of pumpkin puree (25 calories)
- Optional Additions: Dried cranberries, peanut butter chips, chocolate chips, pecans, or walnuts.
Equipment
- Two large bowls
- Large baking sheet
- Parchment paper
- Rubber spatula or other mixing tool
- Cookie scoop / round tablespoon measurement
- Cup, tablespoon, and teaspoon measurements
Directions
- Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F.
- In a large bowl mix the 1.5 cups of all purpose flour, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger, 1/4 teaspoon ground allspice, 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg, 1/8 teaspoon ground clove, 1/2 teaspoon baking soda, and 1/4 teaspoon salt to form the dry ingredients.
- In another large bowl, melt 1 stick (8 tbs) of butter and add in the 3/4 cup cup of brown sugar, the 1/4 cup of pumpkin puree, 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract. Mix all of the wet ingredients well.
- In 1/3 incrememts add slowly add the dry ingredients to the bowl of wet ingredients while stirring. Don’t add in all of the dry ingredients right away or they will just clump up and make a mess. Repeat this process until all of the ingredients are mixed very well to form a thick dough/batter.
- At this point you have a decision to make. You can go ahead and make plain pumpkin spice cookies or you can add in some extra ingredients to the dough such as dried cranberries (my favorite) or peanut butter chips or anything else you might like. Feel free to even split up the cookie dough in half or thirds and add different ingredients to each portion of dough.
- Lay down some parchment paper (or aluminim foil if you don’t have parchment paper) and scoop a heaping round tablespoon of dough onto the baking sheet. If you have a cookie scoop (it looks like an ice cream scoop, but smaller) then use that. Pictured below, I have plain, cranberry, and chocolate chip cookies all in the same batch!
- Bake in the oven for 15 to 20 minutes depending on your oven. You want the cookies to appear golden brown and still remain soft to the touch. If they start getting crispy in the oven, then the cookies will be more crunchy rather than soft and tender. If the cookies aren’t as flat as you would like out of the oven, then you can very lightly pat them down with a spatula, but you shouldn’t need to if your oven holds its temperature properly.
- Carefully remove the cookies to a cooling rack and let them sit for 10 minutes or so to cool down.
- Now the cookies are ready to eat! Enjoy them as they are or you can even take two soft plain cookies and turn them into pumpkin spice whoopie pies using whipped cream or light frosting as a filling in the middle!
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