Favorite Thing #18 — Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

I’ve been making these cookies since college. One day my roommate wanted to try to make these– “all you do is combined a can of pumpkin with a box of spice cake mix” she says. This seemed crazy to me and unlikely to be successful. But turns out, they were really good and we were hooked. It didn’t take us long to realize that they needed chocolate chips. So, here is the recipe:

• box of spice cake mix
• can of pumpkin
• 1 cup chocolate chips

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Combined cake mix and pumpkin. This takes a bit of time and elbow grease but trust me, it works. Once you have this mixture smooth you can add in the chocolate chips. I say 1 cup, but we generally throw in a little extra. Drop batter (about a small spoonful) on cookie sheet keeping a decent distance between your cookies. Bake 8-10 minutes. It’s super easy to know when these are done. If you gently tap them on the top they should bounce back. If they squish, they need more time.

And viola, you now have the simplest pumpkin cookie recipe and it is quite delicious as well. In all fairness, they aren’t the prettiest cookies, but does that even matter? Around here we prefer taste to beauty when it comes to our food. These cookies are somewhat nostalgic for me also, transporting me to another phase of life and sweet memories with one of my best friends. Now as I make them with my kids I wonder if she is doing the same. A sweet rite of passage that we can both hand down, a connection to each other. Food does this for us in so many ways if we pay attention to it. Michael made this batch in the picture for our poetry tea time last week. What is poetry tea time you ask? Well, you’ll need to come back and read my favorite thing #19 next week to find out.