Brown Butter Pumpkin Snickerdoodles

These are the BEST brown butter pumpkin snickerdoodles. They’re easy to make, have crisp edges and chewy gooey centers, and you don’t even have to make your own caramel OR chill the dough. Hello?!

What makes these Brown Butter Pumpkin Snickerdoodles the BEST?

• Texture. These cookies have it all. Crisp edges and an added crunch from rolling them in cinnamon sugar, soft chewy and gooey centers, and pools of melty caramel. Using pumpkin butter instead of pumpkin puree is how we get the best chewy COOKIE texture where pumpkin puree would give more of a cakey texture.
• Easy. No making your own caramel or even chilling the dough required! These cookies come together in one bowl, and the hardest part is browning the butter, which is literally just melting it and letting it get a little toasty. EASY.
• Subtle pumpkin flavor. You will only need 1/4 – 1/3 C of pumpkin butter (however much you need to add to the browned butter to equal 1 1/4 C total liquid) so the pumpkin flavor is there, but not overpowering at all. The toasty browned butter compliments the pumpkin in the best way.

Ingredients

• High quality European butter. When browning butter, it’s really important to use high quality butter with a high fat content. I recommend using Kerrygold, Danish Creamery, Pulgra, or something similar!
• Pumpkin Butter. Pumpkin butter is not the same as pumpkin puree! The recipe will probably turn out ok if you use puree, but the cookies will have more of a cakey texture vs the chewy texture you’ll get from pumpkin butter.
• Sugars. A combination of brown and granulated sugars.
• Egg Yolk. This recipe just calls for one egg yolk. Save the white for something else!
• Soft Caramels. Using store bought self caramels makes this recipe super easy, but still drool-worthy!
• Flaky Salt. No cookie of mine is ever safe from a sprinkle of flaky salt!

How to Make Pumpkin Caramel Snickerdoodles

Brown the Butter.

Browning butter is such an easy way to add so much flavor to your bakes, and I especially love doing it for fall desserts like this one. Add your butter to a medium sized saucepan. I recommend using either stainless steel or one with a ceramic coating or light colored coating. Every time I use a dark colored non-stick type of saucepan I over brown the butter or even burn it.

Let the butter melt, no need to stir it, but you can swirl the pan around if you need to. As the butter continues to cook, the milk solids will separate from the fat and then those milk solids will toast and that’s where the flavor comes from. The easiest way to tell when it’s done is to watch for the foam. After 3-5 minutes, the butter will start to foam up. Swirl the pan around and look to see if the milk solids are getting golden brown and toasted – this is where a light colored pan will help you out!

Remove the browned butter from the heat and let it cool a bit. You will lose some of the butter volume when you brown butter, so it’s important to have a kitchen scale in order to know exactly how much pumpkin butter to add. You will need between 75-100 grams of pumpkin butter, depending on how much your butter weights after browning it. Place a liquid measuring cup on your kitchen scale and pour in the browned butter. Make sure to scrape out all of the browned bits at the bottom of the pan! Then, add as much pumpkin butter as you need to reach 280 total grams.

Let the butter come to room temperature. You can speed this up by popping it in the fridge and giving it a stir every couple of minutes, but don’t let it completely solidify.

Prep the Dough.

Before you start the dough, pop the soft caramels into the fridge to firm up a bit and make them easy to slice. Then, preheat the oven to 350 degrees F and line 2 cookie sheets with parchment paper.

In the bowl of your stand mixer, add the cooled brown butter/pumpkin butter mixture along with the sugars. Beat with the paddle attachment for 2-3 minutes or until it becomes thick and fluffy like in the photo below. Add the egg yolk and vanilla and mix until combined.

Add in the dry ingredients and mix until just combined. To avoid over mixing, stop the mixer when a few streaks of flour remain and do a final mix by hand with a rubber spatula. Use a large 3 TBSP cookie scoop to portion the dough out onto the prepared cookie sheets. Place 6 cookies on each tray. In a small bowl, whisk together the brown sugar, granulated sugar, and cinnamon for the brown sugar coating. Roll the cookie dough into a smooth ball in your hands, then coat it in the brown sugar mixture.

Stuff with Caramel & Bake.

Cut each soft caramel in half. Then, press half a caramel into the center of each cookie. Tuck the dough up and around the caramel, but don’t cover it completely. Bake at 350 for 13-15 minutes. You should have 12 caramel halves left over – let them sit on the counter to return to room temperature while the cookies bake.

When the cookies are right out of the oven and still piping hot, place the other half of caramel into the caramel that’s already in the cookie. It will melt slowly, and stay nice and soft this way. If you put the whole caramel into the cookie while it bakes, it gets really sticky and chewy, and has a tendency to try to run out the sides of the cookie as it bakes.

I suggest using the Walmart brand bettergoods Soft Caramels. They are big and stay super soft for days after baking. Werther’s is another good option, but they’re smaller and not as soft but they’ll do the job! Most soft caramels should work fine, but I’ve personally tested these two and know for sure that they’re good!

Browned Butter Pumpkin Snickerdoodles FAQs

• Can I make these cookies gluten free? I have not tested it yet, but you should be able to swap out the all purpose flour for a 1 to 1 gluten free flour replacement like this one from King Arthur Baking.
• Can I use pumpkin puree instead of pumpkin butter? No. Pumpkin butter is NOT the same as pumpkin puree. Pumpkin puree is 100% cooked and blended pumpkin – no added ingredients. Pumpkin butter is pumpkin puree that is cooked down with other ingredients like syrups and spices to create a jam-like spread. You can find pumpkin butter at most grocery stores or on Amazon. I really like the one from Trader Joes! If you do swap for pumpkin puree, the recipe will likely turn out ok, but the texture of the cookies will be a lot more cakey.
• Can I use light brown sugar instead of dark? Yes. If you don’t have dark brown sugar, go ahead and substitute light brown. Dark brown sugar just has extra molasses in it that results in a chewier cookie, but it won’t be a huge difference.