Kabocha & Chestnut Cookies

I have been loving using Kabocha pumpkin in sweet recipes, it has a lovely nutty flavour and a great consistency that yields well to baked goods. When I saw this chestnut flour I knew I wanted to try it to make cookies. If you can’t get hold of this other flours will be fine to use like oat or rice.

First steam 1/2 a Kabocha pumpkin and let it cool. Scoop out the flesh, you need enough for 1 cup of pumpkin. Add this into a food processor and add to it 1/3 cup of maple syrup, one teaspoon of almond essence or you could use vanilla essence and two tablespoons of melted coconut butter.
Add to a bowl 1 cup of chestnut flour and 1/2 cup almond flour to that add 1 teaspoon of baking powder and 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda, add to this either pumpkin spice powder or a mix of cinnamon and nutmeg. Give this a mix and then add your wet ingredients to your dry. Cream it together to form a dough add a little water a few teaspoons a little at a time if your dough is too dry but do not make it too wet.

Form a ball and place it in the fridge to chill for around 30 mins.

Take out your dough and roll it on some parchment paper, use a cookie cutter to cut out any shapes you like. If you have a pumpkin cookie cutter I think this would be a great time to use it. As I didn’t I just cut mine into rounds. I then placed each cookie on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and added a few pumpkin seeds for decoration.
Bake in a moderate oven, these cookies are quite soft not crispy.

They would also work well crumbled onto porridge or use as I did as a crust for pumpkin pie using mini tartlet cases.

Just grease the cases before adding your biscuit base and bake. After you can add your pie filling. I love the pumpkin custard pie filling from the vegan pudding company. Originally from Japan they are now based in Canada but they ship world wide. Or just use my tofu pumpkin pie recipe. This company do three filling favours the vanilla is the pumpkin but they also do a chocolate and a matcha.

Happy Halloween Happy Fall