Gluten Free Pumpkin Cookies

These gluten free pumpkin cookies are the perfect mixture of sweetness, and pumpkin spice. Just like a Crumbl Pumpkin cake cookies, but gluten free! 

Are you ready for fall flavors yet? I know it’s only August, but believe it or not, the pumpkins in our garden have turned orange, and for me that means one thing – time for pumpkin everything!

This recipe and post is sponsored by Judee’s Ingredients. All opinions are my own, and I could’t be more thrilled to be partnered with a company I love and whose products I use so much! Their sponsorship means a lot to me, and I hope you enjoy this recipe as much I my kids and I have. 

Don’t get me wrong, I adore all of our summer cooking and desserts, but the warm spiciness of pumpkin has my heart. I think it’s a comfort food thing. 

This particular recipe is one of my favorites so far, and that’s saying something, because it’s really hard to beat pumpkin spice French toast. 

The combination of cakey cookie filled with cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and ginger, and topped with cream cheese icing is just *chef’s kiss*. And that’s before topping them with chocolate. That might just cross into epic territory. 

I’m a huge fan of simple drop cooking like gluten free pumpkin snickerdoodle, but these are totally and completely worth taking a few extra minutes for. 

Don’t let the two part of making both cookie and icing fool you though – these are still very easy cookies to make. All you need is a few ingredients, and either a mixer, or a strong whisking arm. (you could also buy remade icing, but honestly it only has half the flavor of homemade cream cheese icing.)

Gluten free cookies have a bit of a reputation for being tricky to make, and with good reason, but I feel like this recipe checks all the boxes for being both easy to make, and incredibly good. They don’t fall apart at all, but they’re still soft and moist while being full of excellent flavor. I think this might be one of the recipes I’m most proud of so far. 

Gluten Free Pumpkin Cookies

With that said, I have a few recommendations for you. 

• Use a neutral tasting blend of flours. Sometimes if you use just one type of flour, your baked goods can be funny tasting, so I like to use a blend. In this case, I use Judee’s quinoa, teff, and arrowroot powder. I wouldn’t necessarily call teff neutral, but while quinoa is relatively neutral, and I do use it alone with a starch fairly often, I think that using a small amount of teff – a different flavor helped bring some balance.
• This dough is a little sticky. With gluten free flours, you don’t always have the luxury of an easy-to-handle dough and a great final product together. So instead we sacrifice the easy dough so we can have excellent results. It’s worth the trade. Point is though, you need to dip your cup in starch or powdered sugar before you press down your cookies so they don’t stick.
• Shape your cookies before you bake them. If you press it down into an oblong, it’s going to stay oblong, so use your powdered sugar-coated fingers to make round edges if you need to before baking. You can see in the photos that not all my cookies are round, because I didn’t shape all of them well. 5/10 on presentation, but hey, they taste the same!

So let’s bake. 

Get your ingredients together. 

Once you’re ready to go, combine your dry ingredients. 

Set them aside, and work on the wet ingredients. 

Beat butter and sugars together until fluffy, then beat in your eggs, vanilla, and pumpkin.

Next, stir in your dry ingredients. 

Lastly for the cookies, scoop them by the tablespoon onto a parchment lined pan, and flatten them to about 1/4 inch by dipping a flatten-bottomed cup or measuring cup into powdered sugar or starch to keep it from sticking. Bake for 10 minutes, then let them cool on a wire rack

While the cookies cool, make the icing. 

Simply combine the butter, cream cheese, vanilla, and powdered sugar until smooth.

Then ice your cookies

And lastly? Add some cacao nibs. 

So good!

Gluten Free Pumpkin Cookies

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★★★★★

5 from 1 reviews

• Author: Elise New

Ingredients

Scale 1x2x3x

• 1 cup quinoa flour*

• ⅓ cup ivory teff flour*

• ⅔ cup arrowroot powder*

• 1 teaspoon xanthan gum**

• 1 ½ teaspoons baking powder

• 1 ½ teaspoon cinnamon 

• ¼ teaspoon ground cloves

• ¼ teaspoon ginger

• ¼ teaspoon salt

• ½ cup butter

• ½ cup brown sugar

• ½ cup white sugar

• 1 cup pumpkin puree

• 1 egg

• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

For the icing: 

 

• 3 oz. cream cheese

• 3 Tablespoons butter

• ⅔ cup powdered sugar

• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

• 2 Tablespoon mini chocolate chips (optional)

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350º

2. In a smaller mixing bowl, combine flours, baking powder, cinamon, cloves, ginger, and salt. Set aside

3. In a larger mixing bowl, cream butter and sugars together until fluffy

4. Add pumpkin puree, egg, and vanilla, and beat together until all is incorporated

5. Stir in dry ingredients until combined

6. Scoop into 1 ½ tablespoon sized balls and place on a baking sheet with a few inches of space between each for air flow

7. Flatten cookies to about ¼ inch thick discs using a flat-bottomed cup such as a measuring cup dipped in powdered sugar or arrowroot starch

8. Bake in center of oven for 10-12 minutes, until set

9. Remove from oven and transfer to wire rack to cool

10. While cookies are cooling, combine icing ingredients except for chocolate chips, and beat until smooth

Notes

* Or use your favorite flour mix

**Omit if using a flour mix that already contains xanthan or guar gum.

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