Pumpkin Spice Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Cookies

Name: Pumpkin Spice Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Cookies
Prep time: 10 min
Cook time: 12 min
Ingredients: 4 tablespoons unsalted butter (softened); 2 tablespoons unsweetened natural applesauce; 1/2 cup granulated sugar; 1/2 cup brown sugar (packed); 1 teaspoon vanilla; 2 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice; 1 large egg; 1 cup whole wheat flour; 1/2 cup all-purpose flour; 1/4 teaspoon salt; 1/4 teaspoon baking powder; 1/4 teaspoon baking soda; 1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

Some foods bear memories with each bite.

I can’t eat bratwurst without remembering my semester in Germany, without recalling how I would pack my suitcase on the days free from classes and travel off by myself. On those solo trips to Italy, Luxembourg, Switzerland, and Belgium, I learned as much about myself as I did about art, architecture, and European cultures.

Turkey noodle soup will always melt my heart. The night Ryan proposed, I arrived to town and started to make a stock on the oven using the last week’s Thanksgiving turkey. The house smelled richly of turkey stock by the time Ryan arrived home and suggested we walk towards our old campus. Over the next few days, as we celebrated our engagement with family and friends, we dined on turkey noodle soup made from that stock.

Vanilla chocolate swirl cake now will forever bring a smile to my face, since Ryan’s and my wedding cake was a beautiful swirl of white cake and chocolate covered in thick white buttercream.

When I was little, my mom often made a big and soft chocolate chip cookie cake. She trimmed and decorated it with chocolate frosting and cut it into pizza-style triangles. She would make it for birthday parties, class holiday parties, and other events worthy of such a treat. It was such a memorable and beloved dessert from my childhood that when I turned 22 and moved into my first apartment, my mom made me a cookbook that included this recipe.

Since then I’ve made chocolate chip cookie cake a few times. This recipe is so good and easy to make that I started using it for the occasional batch of chocolate chip cookies. I started a couple years back adding different flavors to adapt it. I once added a bit of amaretto and some coarsely chopped almonds in addition to the chocolate chips for a chocolate almond cookie cake. This time, I added spices to create some autumnal chocolate chip cookies.

Pumpkin spice whole wheat chocolate chip cookies, to be exact. We’ve been adding pumpkin pie spice – an aromatic mixture of cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, cloves, and allspice – to our coffee for a couple months now. Naturally, as fall progressed, pumpkin pie spice sneaked its way into our oatmeal, pancakes, quick breads, and now our cookies. The spice blends so well with the chocolate chips and complements the slight nuttiness of the whole wheat flour.

In addition to adding the pumpkin pie spice, I slightly altered my mom’s recipe to make healthier cookies. I switched out ⅔ of the all-purpose flour for whole wheat and replaced some of the butter with applesauce. The whole wheat flour provides healthy complex carbohydrates while the applesauce lowers the calories and fat in the cookies. Additionally, I altered the leavening agents based on my secret trick for cookies. Instead of 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda, I use 1/4 teaspoon each of baking soda and baking powder

These cookies still taste amazing, even with the adjustments to make them a healthier treat. I brought one to Ryan when I picked him up after work for us to run errands. His first reaction was to tell me that the cookies was amazing…and his second reaction was to ask me why I only brought him one!

Since these pumpkin spice whole wheat chocolate chip cookies are healthy, you don’t need to feel bad about having two.