Improvise

I love spending time in the kitchen. I think that is my favorite part of the holidays… having people over and spending all day cooking for them. On more than one occasion I have found myself needing to come up with an emergency substitute for a recipe because I frequently experience mental pause… and because more than once, my children have decided to consume something from the pantry or freezer that was meant to be used as an ingredient at a future date.

For example, one year I stocked up on Cool Whip because I knew I would need a lot of it to make our traditional pumpkin cheesecakes at Thanksgiving time (see post from last November for more details on that tradition) I went to the freezer to get them out on the SUNDAY that I was going to make them and discovered that my son, D, who lived in the basement where the freezer was, had decided to eat the frozen cool whip like ice cream…. That also explains where all my spoons went…. You guessed it… UNDER THE BED!

My daughter, E, has also been known to alter a recipe or two. When she was in middle school, she decided to make no bake cookies after school one day to surprise me… since it was a “surprise”, she didn’t want to call me and ask where the oatmeal might be. Instead, she opted to just eliminate that ingredient…. SURPRISE!!! It doesn’t really work when you  eliminate the most important ingredient.

So back to my latest improv…

If you know me, you know that as soon as the “Ber” months arrive, it is pumpkin everything at our house… pumpkin hand soap, pumpkin air freshener, pumpkin dessert almost every day.  So yesterday I dug out the flannel sheets and dreamed about pumpkin cookies ALL NIGHT LONG!!!!

I woke up all excited about making cookies and by 8 am on a Saturday, I was up and showered and in the kitchen. Several weeks ago, I busted out the pumpkin a little early and tried a new recipe for a pumpkin cake with apple cider glaze. If you have been on FB in the past several weeks, you know the one I am talking about. (If I knew who started that I would totally give them props for the idea!!!)When I made it, I thought it might be an easy way to make pumpkin cookies as well, so I was way excited this morning to try it out. I mixed up a double batch which consisted of two cake mixes (pick whatever flavors you happen to have in the pantry… and a large can of pumpkin (not the pie filling). It is tradition at my house to add chocolate chips to the pumpkin cookies so I went back to the pantry…. WHAT???? I was fresh out of the 10 lbs of chocolate chips I bought at cash and carry not too long ago…. After cussing the kids under my breath, I went back to the pantry to improvise… Necessity is the mother of all great recipes!!!! I found half a bag of white chocolate chips and half a bag of butterscotch….

Can I just say that pumpkin cookies will never be the same at my house again… these are TO DIE FOR!!!! And how easy is it to mix a dry cake mix, a can of pumpkin and a bag of chocolate chips? I could make these in my sleep!!! Trust me… you will want to bust out the cookie sheets and make some RIGHT NOW!!!

So here's the recipe:

You can use any kind of cake mix that you have in the pantry... I'm kind of excited to try spice cake next time! If you use a small can of pumpkin, use only one cake mix...

Mix these ingreds, drop onto greased cookie sheet, bake at 350* for about 14 min and this is what you get:

MMM...MMMM...MMMM!!!!!