pumpkin cookies

Well, gang, it's still October for about eighteen more hours. The bulk of autumn has slipped through our foolish fingertips, gone before its time. We've still got one month left to celebrate the season, however, and I intend to enjoy it as thoroughly as possible, no matter the cost.

Let's face the facts: lots of women like to bake, this is not some abnormal obsession that is unique to me. If I want to whip up a delicious confection or pastry for myself in the privacy of my home, I'm going to fucking do it. This is mostly because desserts that are both vegan AND gluten-free are not only rare in the wild but also usually quite expensive when they can be found. That's beside the point, though. I don't need a real reason; I'm a god damned American. Exercising my rights and manifesting my own true destiny, I decided to deviate from the beaten path and make up my own proprietary pumpkin cookie creation. I figured, hey, I'm a fucking rocket scientist. How hard could it be?

one cup of brown rice flour

one cup of pumpkin purée

three-quarters of a cup of stevia

one-quarter of a cup of canola oil

two tablespoons of ground chia seeds

one teaspoon of baking soda

one-quarter of a cup of molasses

two tablespoons of coffee

one teaspoon of vanilla

two teaspoons of cinnamon

one teaspoon of allspice

one half of a teaspoon of nutmeg

one half of a teaspoon of ginger

one half of a teaspoon of ground cloves

a pinch of salt

A bit of a disclaimer: I'm not really a strong baker, even when I have an actual recipe in front of me. I cannot recommend doing what I do here in any way. Steam and mash the pumpkin. Hydrate the chia egg. Preheat your oven to 350°. We're about to hit the road. Stay in school, kids.

Once I got my shit together, the situation looked a little something like this; I just kind of dumped everything in wet to dry. This was a one-bowl cookie type of day. I have no regrets.

In go the spices. This of course is a bit of my custom pumpkin spice mix from a few weeks ago, perfectly at home in our big pretty bowl of incontinence. This stuff is so versatile. It truly knows no bounds.

There they are. This was...an unexpectedly wet batter. I was using the last dredges of rice flour in my pantry and ended up at least a half of a cup short of what would have probably been ideal. I have to admit that there were very few points in the process where these things looked appetizing on camera. Even my mixing bowl shot didn't really turn out, which is always so disappointing. This is why real chefs get paid the big bucks.

Here's what they looked like after twenty-three minutes under the coil, and what a sight they are. The entire time they were in the oven I was doing dishes and muttering promises to god under my breath about how I would turn my life around if they actually baked through. He delivered, so I guess that means I have to deliver, too.

Texturally, they honestly turned out much more like cake than they did cookies, which in a way I was kind of into. Soft-baked cookies are delicious, but, with that being said, these things were almost soft to the point of not being able to lift themselves up off of the parchment paper more than a couple of millimeters. I think I made the batter too heavy. I had clipped their wings at the outset of their lives.

Thinking on my feet, I decided to try baking some of the leftover slop in a muffin tray after making that observation, just to see what would happen. They didn't rise very much more, but they certainly were able to hold their own with the aid of the tin in a way that they couldn't on the cookie sheet; with that being said, however, there really was no difference between the two versions aside from their girth. In the end, I have nobody to blame for my mistakes except for myself.

The fact of the matter is, they turned out great, to me, at least. If you're ever in the mood for a treat that sort of tastes like pumpkin and almost feels like a cookie, give these little diarrhea puddles a shot. Or find a real recipe, I don't know. Figure it out.