The days are dark and cold. Let’s make brown butter pumpkin chocolate chip cookies.
Actually, it’s not that cold. It was 70 degrees yesterday. Boo. I’ll take cool temps and a light dusting of snow, please.
Warm or cold, it is that time of year. That time to eat everything pumpkin. You know, just before we switch to peppermint and molasses. I’ve been taking full advantage the season – beer, bread, lattes, soup, smoothies, pasta, pancakes, yogurt, bars, and cookies. Obviously, cookies.
These brown butter pumpkin chocolate chip cookies are super easy to make. Let me sum it up – brown the butter. Whisk in the sugars and wet ingredients. Fold in the dry ingredients. Stir in the chocolate chips. Chill. Bake. Eat.
It’s truly that simple.
You could make it easier on yourself and just use melted butter instead of brown butter, but don’t. Brown butter is just too good and it’s not that difficult to make. If I can do it, you surely can.
In other news, yesterday marked eight weeks since my heart surgery. EIGHT WEEKS. Honestly, I still haven’t completely wrapped my head around the fact that it happened. But it did. I have the scars to prove it.
My recovery has been going extremely well (except for that time my incision got infected and I had to take antibiotics for four weeks). I have been lucky to have a strong, supportive network and can’t thank people enough for reaching out with kind words and positive vibes.
I have been going to a cardiac rehab class every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning for the last 4 weeks. Here I am connected to a heart monitor and do 40 minutes of cardio and a few minutes of strength training and stretching. I have been working my way up to running during the cardio portion and got up to 25 minutes of running yesterday (intervals of 5-minutes jogging with 2-minutes walking). I hate (and am terrible at) running on treadmills, but it feels great to work up a sweat.
Since the cardiac rehab has helped build up my cardiac endurance and confidence Michael and I decided it was finally time to head out on a hike last weekend. I woke up so excited on Saturday you would have thought I was an 8-year-old on Christmas morning! We did Mount Galbraith on Saturday and White Ranch on Sunday for a total of about 9.5 miles for the weekend. I think we were both a little bit nervous, but we took things slow and steady and didn’t run into any issues. I didn’t even feel any waves of lightheadedness like I always had this summer. It was so wonderful to be outside and hiking through the foothills with Michael again! I kind of tear up just thinking about it. Haha.
It’s been quite the journey and now it’s time to focus on increasing my cardio endurance, gaining back muscle tone, and eating brown butter pumpkin chocolate chip cookies.
- ½ cup butter
- 1 ice cube
- ¼ cup granulated sugar
- ½ cup brown sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- ⅓ cup pumpkin puree
- 1 ½ cup all-purpose flour
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- ⅓ teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- ¼ teaspoon nutmeg
- ¼ teaspoon cloves
- ¼ teaspoon all spice
- ½ cup chocolate chips
- Brown the butter. To do this melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Whisk the melted butter until it becomes golden brown in color and has a nutty smell.
- Pour browned butter into a large bowl and whisk in an ice cube. It will froth a little.
- Once the brown butter has cooled for a minute or two whisk in the sugars, vanilla extract, and pumpkin puree until smooth.
- Fold in the flour, baking soda, salt, and spices.
- Stir in the chocolate chips.
- Chill the cookie dough in the refrigerator for an hour (up to 24 hours).
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
- Roll dough into balls and place them on the cookie sheet. Bake for 9-13 minutes.
- Let the cookies cool on the baking sheet for 10 minutes and then move them onto a cooling rack to cool completely.
Make sure to check out these other pumpkin recipes: pumpkin oreo bars, chocolate pumpkin snack cake, brown butter pumpkin bars & hearty, healthy pumpkin soup.
