{Whole Wheat} Pumpkin Maple Chunk Cookies

You all proud of my patience? 

I waited until September for a true pumpkin recipe!

And boy is this a good one.  Worth the wait.  Completely.

These are chock full of fall flavor. They are soft, yet easy to hold in your hands. Sweet, spicy (in the fall sense) and absolutely delicious, you will not be able to eat just one. I promise. They were a hit, which is two in a row (believe it or not, that doesn't always happen) and the batch didn't last very long. Not a problem, I've still got lots and lots of pumpkin it hung to be used!  If you don't know me, this is me in a nutshell this time of year. 

I use pumpkin all year round, but usually for myself. Now, there is nothing to hide and its totally acceptable to make everything orange and dotted with cinnamon. My kind of season right there. I'm kind of crazy that way. Pumpkin and me are close. I even have a board devoted to it.

Aaaand I finally used the maple sugar chunks I bought in Quebec City!  They are absolutely perfect in these cookies.  Think the texture of toffee chunks with a deep maple sugar flavor.  Its amazing.  Blows chocolate chips and toffee chunks out of the water.  They don't melt in the cookie, but they melt in your mouth.  Can you ask for more fall flavor? 

Between the whole wheat and the pumpkin, these are practically health food.  For volleyball, we are supposed to be eating fuel foods for all our games. "What we eat is how we play."  This week is full of games!  We had one last night (best game yet!), and then one on Thursday, one on Friday, and two on Saturday. It's going to be a blast. Last night really set the tone. It was our first 3 out of 5 match/set (I don't know!:) and against a team that has a 6 foot 3 inch hitter. She's good. But our middles showed up and took away the front row and our back row played great defense. I felt like I served well, too, which was nice since I had been serving inconsistently. It was fun to play a hard team and to show we were physically and mentally tough.  There was more net play and really good volleys. Shout out to all my teammates reading, you all are amazing!  Even more than these cookies and that's saying something :)

{Whole Wheat} Pumpkin Maple Chunk Cookies
Recipe Source:  Adapted slightly from Cookie and Kate
Yield: 2-1/2 dozen cookies

1-1/3 cup whole wheat flour

1 cup all purpose flour 

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

3/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

3/4 teaspoon ground cloves

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup butter, softened

1 1/2 cups sugar

1 cup canned pumpkin puree

1 egg

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

3/4 cup maple sugar chunks 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. 

In a medium bowl, whisk together your dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, ground cloves, and salt). In another medium bowl, cream together butter and sugar. Add pumpkin, egg, and 1 teaspoon vanilla; beat until creamy. Mix in dry ingredients and stir just until combined.  Stir in maple chunks. Scoop a tablespoon of dough onto a cookie sheet. Flatten each cookie slightly. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes, and then transfer the cookies to a rack to cool.  They are incredible warm from the oven!