The dangers of pinterest: Caramel-Stuffed Pumpkin Cookies

Chewy cookies with a gooey caramel center. What more do you need in life?

Let's talk about Pinterest. I'm not the most active pinner, but I like to go on ocassionally when I'm looking for a new workout routine or a yummy dinner recipe. Or at least that's what I tell myself. That ish is dangerous! I sign on with the best of intentions, then end up pinning desserts. Every time. My friend Mo is a great baker and always pins the most delicious-looking recipes; so when I saw she had pinned these Caramel-Stuffed Pumpkin Cookies, I thought it would be an awesome fall treat. But I'm trying to limit my sugar consumption, and this Chex mix was priority #1, so I had to table the cookies for a bit. So after weeks of waiting, Saturday was C-Day (aka Cookie Day. Which is remembered a lot more than once a year in my house).

The pumpkin flavor in these is very slight; I would say they taste more like snickerdoodles than any pumpkin cookie I've had. I think you could add pumpkin pie spice to the dough in place of some/all of the cinnamon to give it a more "fall" flavor. But the snickerdoodle flavor was definitely still edible. ;)

It was a bit tricky covering the caramels with the dough because the dough was super sticky.  But I knew I had to power through,  in the name of all that is sweet. First, I made a patty (I'm sure that's a technical baking term) of dough, then placed the caramel in the center.

Let's play a little game of Hide the Caramel, shall we?

I then folded the edges of the dough in to cover the exposed sides of the caramel, and rolled in between my palms to even out the coverage.

Action shot!

Coat them in cinnamon-sugar and these babies are ready to bake.

These are awesome eaten warm out of the oven (wait like 10 minutes to avoid molten caramel burns), or you can re-create the "fresh out the oven" effect by microwaving them for 11 seconds (my exact, scientific calculation. But I'm sure anywhere between 10-15 would be fine). I didn't try any of them at room temperature, but they apparently taste like a candy bar (per my mom). So probably still pretty good.

Check out that caramel stretch.

If you'd care to see what other dangerous behavior Pinterest is fostering in me, you can follow me here. Happy Wednesday, y'all!