Moonlight Pumpkin Cookies (and the Cider That Goes With Them)

Soft brown-butter pumpkin cookies with white chocolate and orange zest, rolled in cinnamon sugar so they look like little moons. No cutters, no chilling. Serve them with a five-minute stovetop apple cider.

The idea

These are drop cookies, so there is nothing to roll out or cut. Brown butter gives them a toasted, almost caramel edge. Pumpkin keeps the middle soft. White chocolate and a little orange zest make them taste less like a spice cake and more like a treat. The cinnamon-sugar coat is the Halloween bit: they come out looking like small harvest moons. If you want faces, a skewer does the job in about ten seconds per cookie.

They pair with hot spiced apple cider. The orange and cinnamon in the mug echo the cookies without repeating them.

Makes: about 18 cookies
Hands-on time: 20 minutes
Bake time: 11–13 minutes
Skill: first-timer friendly

What you need

Cookies

• 115 g (1/2 cup / 1 stick) unsalted butter
• 100 g (1/2 cup) light brown sugar, packed
• 50 g (1/4 cup) caster or granulated sugar
• 1 large egg, at room temperature
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 120 g (1/2 cup) pumpkin purée (plain tinned pumpkin, not pie filling)
• Zest of 1 small orange
• 190 g (1 1/2 cups) plain flour
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp ground ginger
• 1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)
• 1/2 tsp fine salt
• 100 g white chocolate chips or a chopped bar

Moon-dust coating

• 2 tbsp caster sugar
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• A pinch of ground ginger

Optional faces

• A few dark chocolate chips, or a wooden skewer to press eyes and a smile before baking

Method

1. Heat the oven to 180°C (160°C fan) / 350°F. Line two baking trays with baking paper.
2. Brown the butter. Melt it in a light-coloured saucepan over medium heat. It will foam, then the foam will settle and the milk solids will turn golden and smell like toasted nuts. Take it off the heat as soon as you see brown specks. Pour it into a mixing bowl, including the specks, and leave it for 5 minutes so it is warm rather than scorching.
3. Whisk both sugars into the warm butter until it looks like wet sand. Whisk in the egg and vanilla, then the pumpkin and orange zest. It may look a little split. That is normal. The flour will bring it together.
4. In a separate bowl, stir the flour, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, bicarbonate of soda, and salt. Tip this into the wet mix and stir with a spatula until you can no longer see dry flour. Fold in the white chocolate. The dough will be soft, thicker than cake batter and looser than shortbread.
5. Stir the coating sugar, cinnamon, and ginger in a small bowl.
6. Scoop heaped tablespoons of dough (about 35 g each). Roll each scoop lightly in the coating, then set them on the trays with a good 5 cm between them. They spread.
7. For faces, press two chocolate chips in for eyes and drag a skewer in a small curve for a mouth. Skip this if you prefer plain moons.
8. Bake one tray at a time for 11–13 minutes. The edges should be set and the centres still look slightly soft. They finish cooking on the tray.
9. Cool on the tray for 10 minutes, then move to a rack. They are best slightly warm, when the white chocolate is still soft.

If something looks wrong

• Dough seems too wet. Pumpkin brands vary. Stir in 1 extra tablespoon of flour. Do not add more than that or they turn cakey.
• They spread into puddles. The butter was still hot when the egg went in, or the scoops were too small. Next time, wait until the butter is just warm, and use a heaped tablespoon.
• Centres look raw at 13 minutes. Give them 1–2 minutes more. Ovens lie. A pale edge and a just-set middle is the target, not a hard biscuit.

Store in an airtight tin for 3 days. They also freeze well for a month. Warm a frozen cookie for 20 seconds in the microwave.

The drink: stovetop moon cider

This is apple juice warmed with the same spices as the cookies, plus clove and orange. It takes less time than the cookies bake.

For 4 mugs

• 1 litre cloudy apple juice (not from concentrate if you can get it)
• 1 orange, sliced
• 2 cinnamon sticks
• 6 whole cloves
• 2 strips of orange peel, optional
• 1 tbsp brown sugar, only if the juice is very tart
• A splash of bourbon or dark rum per mug, optional and for adults

Put the juice, orange slices, cinnamon, and cloves in a saucepan. Bring just to a simmer, then turn the heat to low and leave it for 15 minutes. Do not boil it hard or the juice tastes cooked. Fish out the cloves and cinnamon, or leave a cinnamon stick in each mug. Taste, and add the sugar only if it needs it.

Pour it beside the cookies while they are still a little warm. The cider should be hot enough to steam, not hot enough to scald.

The one thing to keep

These are not pumpkin-pie cookies and not chocolate-chip cookies. The brown butter and orange are what make them worth making again after Halloween. If you only change one thing, keep the brown butter. It is the whole trick, and it is one extra minute at the stove.

Part of my October Halloween run. Bake a batch, warm the cider, and tell me in the comments whether yours came out as moons or faces.