Pumpkin Spice Chocolate Chip Cookies With Sourdough Discard

This recipe for Sourdough Pumpkin Spice Chocolate Chip Cookies might seem like a mish-mash of the most basic, trendy baking words all mixed in one cooke recipe. And you’re not wrong!  

We’re talking:

• Sourdough discard
• Brown butter
• Pumpkin spice
• Chocolate chips
• Sea salt

But if a recipe like this is wrong then, dear reader, I don’t want to be right. I’ve already had three of these since making them — you know, in the name of quality control and all. It’s my culinary duty and I’m not one to shirk responsibility when it comes to cookie testing!

Recipe here, and more information after the jump. I’ve been on the internet long enough to know that the most common gripe with food blogs and online recipes is that the blogger rambles on for too long before sharing the recipe. But if you happen to enjoy rambles, there will be some below!

Sourdough Pumpkin Spice Chocolate Chip Cookies

The perfect fall treat to cozy up with after a day outside!

4 from 27 votes

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Course Dessert

Servings 20 cookies

Ingredients

  

1x2x3x

• 1 ½ c all-purpose flour
• ¼ tsp baking soda
• ¼ tsp baking powder
• ¼ tsp salt
• ½ c unsalted butter
• ¼ c sugar
• ½ c brown sugar
• ½ c pureed pumpkin
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/3 c sourdough discard
• 1 ½ tsp cinnamon
• ⅛ tsp nutmeg
• ⅛ tsp cloves
• ⅛ tsp allspice
• 1 c semi-sweet or dark chocolate chips or chunks

Instructions

 

• Brown butter — cut butter into small chunks and place in small sauce pan. Heat on low until it foams, stirring and swirling the pan constantly to keep milk solids from burning. Milky whiteness will turn brown and sink to the bottom of the pan and you'll start smelling a delicious nutty scent. Be careful to not burn! Keep a close eye on it.
• Add cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and allspice to brown butter, mixing well and setting aside until cool. You want the butter to be cool so it doesn’t melt the sugar!
• In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt, then set aside.
• Combine sugar, brown sugar, pumpkin puree, vanilla, sourdough discard, and cooled brown butter in another medium bowl, stirring to mix thoroughly.
• Place butter in a small saucepan and heat until bubbling has subsided, smells nutty (not burned) and milk solids on the bottom of the pan has browned. Place in a bowl and set aside.
• Add cinnamon, nutmeg, clove and allspice and mix until well combined. Allow to cool to room temperature before adding to the rest of the ingredients.
• Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients and mix with large wooden spoon or spatula.
• Fold in chocolate chips until combined, then cover bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
• While dough chills, preheat oven to 375 degrees and line cookie sheets with parchment paper.
• Using a spoon, scoop cookie dough into 1 ½ tbsp (eyeball it!) sized balls, rolling them and gently flattening as you press onto sheets. Sprinkly tops of cookies with flaky sea salt.
• Bake for 10 minutes, rotating trays halfway through. The cookies will look slightly underbaked but trust the process. Remove from oven and let cool on trays for 10 minutes before transferring cookies with wire cooling rack.
• You can store these at room temperature for a few days, or in the fridge.You can also flash freeze them to heat up when you’re in the mood for a treat!

Tried this recipe?Let us know how it was!

Now, I know it’s *technically* not fall, but I keep insisting to my husband that it’s “meteorological fall” because I heard that on the radio and it stuck in my mind. All I know is I busted out my sweater collection, have been rocking slippers every morning when I hop out of bed, and have seen leaves on the ground already. That’s good enough for me!

I’d also like to take this time to declare that while I adore fall, I really dislike Halloween. Everything about it, really! The decorations. The spookiness. The dirt-cheap costumes that are produced only to be discarded, further junking up our planet. The bizarre Halloween stores that pop up in shopping centers, assaulting your senses with garish signs. Whatever the Halloween equivalent of The Grinch is, that’s me!

Back to cookies! While conducting a pantry audit recently, I noticed a can of pumpkin staring me at the face — a can from last fall, to be precise. When we moved into our house it was all I could do to unpack and try to keep a grasp on my sanity. Seasonal baking was out of the question! My canned pumpkin purchase was ambitious, but thankfully it was still well within the expiration date window. I didn’t want to make pumpkin bread, and I really wanted to make cookies. It also happened to be high time I fed my sourdough starter (named Albus Percival Wilfred Brian Dumble-dough), so I decided to incorporate the sourdough discard into said cookies. This adds a touch of moisture and a delightful, tangy kick that pairs well with the chocolate chips and pumpkin spice. The result is a cake-like, pillowy, chewy, pumpkin-y gem of a cookie. Topped with a generous pinch of flaky sea salt, and it’s *chef’s kiss*. 

If you haven’t made pumpkin spice chocolate chip cookies before, then give these a whirl! They’re firmly established in my fall seasonal baking repertoire now, and as I write this they’re sitting right in front of me. And I may or may not be nibbling on one.