Survival Day

I LOVE PUMPKIN! I love pumpkin pie, muffins, cookies, soup, cake, milkshakes, anything with pumpkin I love. So... today when Luke was crabby from cutting a tooth last night, Julia was crabby from missing her nap yesterday, and I was crabby due to (like you can't figure that out!).... I decided there was only one way to rememdy this situation: Bake PUMPKIN COOKIES. I found a yummy Pumpkin & Caramel cookie on http://everydayfoodstorage.blogspot.com/. Crystal, author of the everyday food storage blog, posts yummy, easy, and cheap ideas for using your food storage. Note: The picture of cookies is also from Crystal's blog.

Here is the recipe with a few changes I made:

Pumpkin Cookies with Caramel Icing Cookies

1 cup shortening (I used 1/2 cup shortening & 1/2 cup butter)

1 cup sugar ( I used 3/4 cup)

1 cup canned pumpkin

1 egg

1 t vanilla

2 cups flour (I used 1 cup all purpose & 1 cup whole wheat flour)

1 t baking powder

1 t baking soda

1 t cinnamon

½ t ginger

1 t salt

Heat over to 350. Cream shortening and sugar. Add pumpkin, egg and vanilla. Sift and add dry ingredients. Drop by teaspoonful on cookie sheet. Bake 10-12 mins. Yields 2 1/2 dozen.

Icing

3 T butter

¾ t vanilla

1/4 C. milk *note from Crystal-3/4 T. dry powdered milk + 1/4 C. Water*

½ c brown sugar

1 cup powdered sugar, sifted

Combine butter, vanilla, milk, brown sugar. Cook, stirring constantly to rolling boil. Cool. Stir in powdered sugar. Generously frost cookies while warm. Return icing to heat if too thick.Cookies will appear raised when cooked. Frosting will melt on top of cookie.

As you can tell by the recipe- I am truly grateful for Libby's Pumpkin Puree. These cookies made my house smell so good and occupied Julia as she ate 5 cookies. Sorry Mom- no pictures of the kids today- just a pure survival day!!