Pumpkin Spice Cookies with Brown Sugar Frosting

Melt in your mouth goodness! Pumpkin Spice Cookies with Brown Sugar Frosting

My favourite cookies of all time are soft sugar cookies. You know the ones — soft and sweet, with the best buttercream frosting on top. The frosting is always piled on generously, slightly set, dusted with colourful sprinkles. These Pumpkin Spice Cookies with Brown Sugar Frosting are SO much better!

Pumpkin spice all the things!

I could enjoy one of these cookies any time, but now that it is fall, my craving has changed. I love pumpkin spice lattés, and this cookie has that same spiciness. And the frosting? To. Die. For. It is rich and buttery, with a smooth, caramel flavour that pairs perfectly with the spicy sweet pumpkin cookies. They literally melt in your mouth!

Soft, spicy, sweet. And that frosting is also delicious eaten with a spoon! Yup, that happened.

Recently a good friend gifted me a batch of these cookies, and for about a week, I spent cool, autumn mornings on my patio with an Americano coffee and a plate of these yummy bites. I’ve made several batches since, and trust me, they make an excellent breakfast!

Peanut Butter Sandwich Cookies

Mmmmm peanut butter everything!

Friends, I have a dilemma.

I absolutely LOVE peanut butter cookies. As a kid, my sister and I would make them all the time. They were so easy, required very few ingredients, and our mother would trust us to be able to make them with minimal supervision.

Fast forward sound effects to years later, and I met and married this wonderful dude who is my best friend and husband. He only has one teeny tiny flaw, though. He HATES the aroma of baking peanut butter cookies. I know, right?! Because of this, my enjoyment of peanut butter cookies is limited to those rare occasions when he's not at home.

Like recently! Yay, friends, peanut butter cookies! I didn't want to make the usual, I wanted to make over-the-top-peanut-butter-awesomeness-in-a-cookie. These are oatmeal peanut butter cookies, with chopped, roasted peanuts, peanut butter chips, and sandwiched around the creamiest, peanut-butteriest peanut butter frosting ever. I am dying over these, they are so good. I keep them in the freezer, and that makes them even better, if you can believe it.

Try one of these Peanut Butter Sandwich Cookies – frozen! Wow!

Soft Chewy Oatmeal Cranberry Cookies

Soft, chewy, Oatmeal Cranberries Cookies go well with a cup of tea!

My favourite cookie in the whole, wide, wonderful world is the Oatmeal Raisin Cookie. I love the soft, chewy texture and the rich bursts of sweetness from the raisins. In my opinion, they must always be enjoyed with a cup of tea. Unfortunately, my family does not share my high opinion of these cookies. This is a typical exchange: "What are you baking? It smells great!" "Oatmeal raisin cookies," I smile. "Yuck!" is the usual reply.

It's time for tea!

As a result of my family's raisin revulsion, I rarely have them in the house. When I get a craving for oatmeal raisin, I am usually out of luck. This time, I decided to try dried cranberries as a substitute. Guess what happened? I loved them! They are even better than raisins, in my opinion. The tart cranberries are a bright counterpoint to the rich butter and brown sugar cookie base. Now I have a new favourite!

Click through for the recipe and instructions

Orange & White Chocolate Chip Cookies

Orange & White Chocolate Chip Cookies taste exactly like a Creamsicle!

As winter marches on, I have found myself drifting off to my “happy place” more and more often. You know the place; sunshine, sandy beach, nothing to do but splash around in the water. Summers spent lakeside. Walking to the general store in flip flops – I could feel the heat of the pavement through the thin rubber of my shoes. At the store, I slid back the misted glass of the freezer, full of frozen delight. Which one to choose? I usually chose the creamsicle; not quite ice cream, not quite popsicle. Tart, creamy, and sweet. Orange and milk doesn’t seem like it should mix well, but here, it came together and somehow it just worked. Clutching my frozen treasure, I slapped my sticky stack of quarters on the counter and immediately ripped off the paper wrapping. Outside, not ten steps later, the treat already melted down my arm. The last bites were almost liquid, dripping down my chin in a fluorescent orange line, flavoured every so slightly with the woody tang of the stick. What did it matter if it was messy? Another jump in the lake soon washed away any dinner-ruining evidence.

The creamsicle flavour strongly evokes summer for me so much, that one bite of these Orange and White Chocolate Cookies immediately took me back to that sunny lakeside, full of laziness and fun.

What memory takes you back to summer?

Try freezing the cookies before eating — deloosh!

Click through for the recipe & instructions…

Soft Frosted Chocolate Sugar Cookies

Puffy pillows of chocolate amazingness.

Recently, my husband came home from work with some random store-bought baked good and declared, “these are awesome!” Skeptically, I tasted the offending baked item, and immediately disagreed. Also, (only slightly) offended. He asked me to reproduce the recipe. Of course, he had suggestions — not very helpful suggestions, at that. “Make it more chocolate.” “Make it more different.” “Can you make it taste better?” “I don’t like pink.”

You heard the man.

The candidate for this baker’s makeover was a soft, white sugar cookie with fluffy pink icing, decorated with sprinkles. You know the one! It lives, wrapped in plastic, forgotten on a shelf in your local supermarket’s bakery department. My challenge was to convert this usually stale, dry and chemically-laden sugar bomb into a chocolate delight. Done right, these cookies are tender, full of flavour and not overly sweet. The hit of sweetness comes from the rich chocolate frosting (just a little).

Oh yes, and sprinkles. If you like that sort of thing. (I do.)

Click through for the recipe and instructions.

The Canadiana Cookie Project

My Canadiana Cookie Project

Rather than do a cookie set in a Christmas or holiday theme, I decided to do a theme that evoked winter in Canada. What is more Canadian than Hudson's Bay? Well, it may be American-owned now, but the ubiquitous stripes of the point blanket are reflected in the first cookie, styled into a Christmas stocking. The red blanket-stitch around the edge really makes it stand out.

The second cookie is a sweet little white ice skate. I live on the west coast, so outdoor winter ice skating is but a dream for me. But when I was a teen, I lived in Minnesota for a time and remember the outdoor rink at the end of my street with fondness.

I like to think the third cookie is a cute little Noble Fir; little chickadees nestled in its snow-covered, white sparkle sugar branches.

The fourth cookie is a red mitten, with a fur-lined wrist in red sparkle sugar.

Does this wintery set make you think of skating outdoors, your nose & cheeks turning pink, thoughts of a warm fire at home and hot chocolate in your mug?

Sugar cookie recipe here
Royal icing for outlining recipe here
How to thin royal icing for flooding, video here