Pumpkin Snickerdoodles With Pumpkin Spice Cream Cheese Filling

Cookies

Slightly warm cream cheese so you can easily stir in sugar and spices. Cool in fridge

Once cooled, dip into 1 tsp size dollops of cream cheese and put on plate into freezer (see photo). These do not need to be perfect shaped dollops

Brown butter in pan. This takes about 8-10 minutes. It does pop so be careful and don't let it get too brown. It's perfect when it starts to smell nutty

Once browned, place in bowl and put bowl at room temp to cool down. Once cooled, place in fridge to chill. Butter needs to be COOL but not SOLIDIFIED. Important to mind this step

Preheat oven to 350 F and line two baking trays with parchment paper

Spread pumpkin puree out on plate and work to remove moisture with either a clean kitchen towel or paper towels. This is a painful but important step. If you leave too much moisture in, your cookies will be puffy and cake-like in texture. This is fine, but not what I was going for with the recipe.

Once you remove most of the moisture you will have much less pumpkin puree-about 1/3 C

Take cooled butter and stir in 2 sugars in a large bowl

Whisk in egg yolks, vanilla, and pumpkin puree

Fold in flour, pumpkin spice, salt, arrowroot starch, and baking soda until just combined. Place dough in fridge to cool for about 5 minutes

On separate plate, combine granulated sugar and spice for rolling the cookies

Remove cold cream cheese dollops from freezer

Remove dough from fridge and scoop 3 TBSP size scoops per cookie. Take 3 TBSP amount and separate in half. Flatten into semi-disk shape and place one dollop of cream cheese in center. Cover with other half of dough and roll into ball

Roll through the sugar/spice mixture

Place on baking sheet and repeat until baking sheet has about 6 cookies on it for baking

Bake for 10-11 minutes until edges are just golden brown. The middle may look puffy which is what you want

Let cool on wire rack

Best if eaten within 1 day or stored in freezer if unable to eat all