Iced Pumpkin Oatmeal Cookies

Halloween 2017. The costume negotiations reached their annual crescendo this week. Luc: "I'm too old for costumes." Danielle: "You are NOT too old for costumes." Compromise: Luc wore all black and said he was "a shadow," which is twelve-year-old code for "I'm wearing regular clothes and calling it a costume." Colette: mermaid, with scales that Danielle hand-painted on a bodysuit with fabric paint and an attention to detail that suggests Danielle missed her calling as a theatrical costumer. Rémy: fisherman. Not a cute fisherman. A real fisherman. He wore Joey's old fishing vest that Mama sent up from Thibodaux (it hung to his ankles), carried his rod, and told every house, "I'm a fisherman, like my Papaw." I held it together until the third house. Then I didn't.

The candy haul was considerable. Colette inventoried hers — sorted by type, ranked by preference, stored in Ziploc bags by category. She's nine. She has a candy inventory system. Luc dumped his on the floor and is eating it in no particular order, like a human being. Rémy's candy disappeared overnight, which means he ate it all in bed, which means his sheets need washing, which means Danielle and I pretend to be surprised.

Made a butternut squash soup this week — roasted the squash with garlic and onion, blended it smooth, finished with cream and a pinch of cayenne. It's not Cajun. But October requires squash soup the way March requires crawfish and December requires gumbo. The seasons have their dishes and you serve them or you answer to the calendar. Rémy said it tasted "like orange," which is technically accurate — butternut squash is orange and does taste like itself — and he ate two bowls, which means even my non-Cajun dishes pass the Rémy test.

The soup was for the grown-ups—or at least for whoever could appreciate that butternut squash and October belong together the way Rémy and his Papaw’s fishing vest belong together. But after three kids came home with enough candy to stock a small pharmacy, and after I held it together until the third house and then didn’t, what this week actually needed was something I could bake while the chaos settled—something that smelled like fall and tasted like a holiday and didn’t require explaining to a nine-year-old with a candy inventory system. These iced pumpkin oatmeal cookies were exactly that.

Prep Time: 20 min | Cook Time: 13 min | Total Time: 33 min | Servings: 24 cookies

Ingredients

2 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
1 cup canned pumpkin puree (not pumpkin pie filling)
1 large egg
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
For the icing:
2 cups powdered sugar, sifted
3–4 tbsp whole milk
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
pinch of cinnamon

Instructions

Preheat oven. Heat oven to 350°F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper and set aside.
Whisk dry ingredients. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, oats, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, ginger, and salt until evenly combined.
Cream butter and sugars. In a large bowl, beat the softened butter with both sugars on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes.
Add wet ingredients. Beat in the pumpkin puree, egg, and vanilla extract until smooth. The mixture may look slightly curdled—that’s fine.
Combine. Add the dry ingredient mixture to the wet ingredients and stir with a spatula until just combined. Do not overmix.
Scoop and bake. Drop rounded tablespoons of dough onto the prepared baking sheets, spacing about 2 inches apart. Bake for 11–13 minutes, until the edges are set and the centers look just barely done. Do not overbake.
Cool. Let cookies rest on the baking sheet for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.
Make the icing. Whisk together the powdered sugar, 3 tablespoons of milk, vanilla, and cinnamon until smooth. Add the fourth tablespoon of milk if needed to reach a drizzleable consistency.
Ice the cookies. Drizzle or spread the icing over the fully cooled cookies. Allow the icing to set for 15 minutes before serving or stacking.

Nutrition (per serving)

Iced Pumpkin Oatmeal Cookies — The Sweet Side of October, After the Soup Bowls Are Cleared