Healthy Sugar Free Pumpkin Cookies
These Healthy Sugar Free Pumpkin Cookies are soft and chewy, made with pumpkin spice, almond flour, and topped with cream cheese icing or frosting. This sweet and sugar-free dessert treat is perfect for fall, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and the holidays.
Servings 15 cookies
Calories 143kcal
Ingredients
- 4 tablespoons unsalted butter Softened at room temperature.
- 1/3 cup granulated sweetener
- 1/3 cup brown sweetener
- 1/2 cup 100% pureed pumpkin
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 egg
- 2 1/2 cups blanched almond flour
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice See Notes for how to make your own.
- 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
Optional Icing
- 3 oz cream cheese softened
- 1 teaspoon powdered sweetener Confectioner's
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
- Cream the butter and sweeteners together in a mixing bowl using a hand mixer or standing mixer.
- Add in the pureed pumpkin, egg, and vanilla extract. Beat until creamy.
- Add the almond flour, cinnamon, pumpkin pie spice, baking soda, baking powder, and salt to a separate bowl. Stir to combine.
- Add the dry ingredients to the wet and mix until the mixture is combined. Do not overmix. This will result in dry cookies.
- Line a sheet pan or cookie sheet with a silicone baking mat. This will prevent the cookies from over-browning.
- Form balls with the cookie dough about 1 1/2 tablespoons each. The dough will be wet and sticky. Using wet hands will help.
- Place the balls on the baking mat. Flatten the cookies with the palm of your hand.
- Bake for 10-13 minutes. When checking in on the cookies they should look really soft, but golden at the edges when ready. They will harden up as they cool. You don't want them to look firm in the oven. That will result in burnt cookies. Mine were ready right at 10 minutes.
- Remove the cookies and cool on the silicone baking mat and cookie sheet for 10 minutes before moving them to a cooling rack. This is important. If you move the cookies too soon, they will crumble. Give them a chance to firm up.
- Cool the cookies on the cooling rack for another 15 minutes. Wait until cooled to apply icing. Be gentle while icing.
Icing
- Combine the ingredients and spread on the cookies. If this doesn't produce enough icing for you, add more cream cheese and confectioners sweetener as needed.
Video
Notes
- If you don't want keto cookies, you can substitute almond flour for 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour. You can also use the same measurements noted above for regular table sugar.
- 1 1/2 tablespoons of dough with result in medium-sized cookies. 2 tablespoons are on the low end of large and 2 1/2 tablespoons will make large cookies. The bake time for the larger cookies was closer to 13-16 minutes.
- Watch these closely while they are in the oven. You want it to appear as though you have under-baked the cookies at first. The cookies should never look fully baked while they are in the oven.
- Once the bottom of the cookies begin to turn brown and the cookie has taken shape and appears somewhat firm, remove the cookies from the oven. Almond flour bakes fast. If you leave the cookies in too long you will end up with burnt cookies.
- Every oven bakes differently. I notice that items toward the back of my oven brown faster than food toward the front. Sometimes I have to rotate the positioning of sheets and pans (halfway through) to take this into account, otherwise, some cookies would turn out done while others were way too soft. Become familiar with how your oven bakes.
- The longer the cookies cool, the firmer they will be. Patience is crucial. Because this recipe uses pumpkin puree, the cookies will need a little bit more cooling time.
- Macros do not include icing. Input the ingredients into your preferred calculator.
- If want to add chocolate chips, fold those in after you have mixed the batter and before you form balls with the dough.
- Ground Cinnamon (1 teaspoon)
- Ground Ginger (1/2 teaspoon)
- Ground Nutmeg (1/2 teaspoon)
Nutrition
Serving: 1cookie | Calories: 143kcal | Carbohydrates: 3g | Protein: 5g | Fat: 13g