It’s officially Fall! Yep, I’m ready for the cooler weather, snuggling up on the couch with my sweetie pie and the doggies and enjoying pumpkin spiced treats like these chocolate pumpkin pie madeleine cookies! I have a little trick to add pumpkin pie flavoring to all my baked goods now. I played around with the Trader Joe’s Gluten Free Pumpkin Pancake Mix last year and added it to muffins, cookies, cakes, all kinds of treats, and I must say… when this time of year rolls around and I go shopping and I see the boxes of the pumpkin pancake mix hit the shelves, I get a little giddy!
Yep, I don’t know how else to describe it… it’s like biting into little chunks of Heaven… if Heaven were Pumpkin Cake! These Madeleine cookies are pretty much made the same way you would make any Madeleine cookie, only you substitute boring ole flour with Trader Joe’s Pumpkin Pancake Mix! If you don’t have access to the mix, then you would simply add pumpkin pie spice to the recipe below and sub in all-purpose flour for the pancake mix.
While we’re on the subject of pumpkins, have you ever tried growing your own for Halloween and Fall recipes? The seeds germinate so quickly and they are tons of fun to grow. They grow so quickly that it literally looks like they are growing right before your eyes! I even gave a few seeds to a friend of ours and showed his 5 year old son how to simply stick the seed down an inch and water every day and within a few days, he had a pumpkin plant!
We have a few raised garden boxes that we started earlier this year. In the picture above, we planted the pumpkins on the far side so the vines could wander out of the box and into the soil. We planted the seeds in late June and our pumpkins have been ripening just about now. The raised bed seemed to work great for retaining water in our dry Southern California climate… and it kept the gophers out! Yay!
We had a very hot summer here in Southern California, and I noticed if I missed a night of watering, our pumpkins drooped quite a bit. They seemed to like a good watering each night, and every once in awhile I’d give them a good feeding of Miracle Gro. We planted lots of Marigolds around the garden to bring in the butterflies and bees! This helped a lot with pollinating the big giant orange flowers that the pumpkin vines put out.
We ended up with lots of bees and hornets this year, which was great to see! They work so hard to pollinate for our benefit! I went to our LA County fair this past weekend and learned so much about bees! Here are Five Fun Facts about bees:
- Bees pollinate an estimated one-third of all the food crops we consume! Wow! Go bees!
- A worker bee might visit up to 2000 flowers in a day. She can’t carry all the pollen at once, so she’ll visit 50-100 flowers before heading back to the hive. Because she works so hard, she may only live 3 weeks.
- The youngest worker bees makes the beeswax to construct the honeycomb. They have glands on the underside of their abdomen that produce waxy droplets. These droplets harden when exposed to the air. Then the bee works the wax in its mouth to create the honeycomb.
- A single bee produces about 1/12 a teaspoon of honey in a lifetime. A healthy hive must produce 60 lbs. of honey to sustain the hive through winter.
- Honey bees can fly up to 15 miles per hour, which is pretty slow in the bug world. Bees are designed to travel short distances. They may flap their wings up to 12,000 times per minute to keep their bodies afloat while carrying pollen onboard!
And of course the butterflies are my favorite! I could watch them for hours. The Marigolds did a great job of attracting the right critters to the garden. And did you know that Marigolds act as a repellent for unwanted bugs and pests! So without even trying, they are working hard in the garden 🙂
Our pumpkins are ripe and ready to be picked. The vines die off and turn brown as they expend all their energy towards the pumpkins. If you want larger pumpkins, make sure to only grow two on your vine! I love using the ripened pumpkins as decorations around the house until we are ready to make pie!!
All this talk about gardening, are you hungry yet? Looking for a very easy treat to bake up and enjoy through the Fall? These Pumpkin Madeleine cookies are not only super simple, but when they bake up, they fill your house with the delicious smells of Fall! There’s something so comforting about those spicy smells! These cookies make the perfect breakfast snack to go with your coffee or enjoy them in the afternoon with some tea. They also store in the freezer and warm up easily for a late night treat!
Let’s get into the recipe for these delightful cookies!
Chocolate Pumpkin Pie Madeleine Cookies Recipe
Ingredients
Method
- Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Grease Madeleine mold with butter and then lightly dust with flour.
- Whisk the eggs with sugar with an electric mixer for 5 minutes until pale and tripled in volume.
- Melt the butter and allow to cool slightly. Slowly fold in the Trader Joe's Pumpkin Pancake Mix and Flour (or all flour if you don't have the mix) and add butter, vanilla and pinch of salt.
- Chill the batter in the refrigerator for two hours before baking. It will look like a soft dough.
- Pour or scoop dough into the prepared mold, filling about halfway.
- Bake for 8-10 minutes or until the cookies start to brown slightly.
- Remove from oven and let cool in the mold form for a few minutes. Prepare a large baking sheet with parchment paper and place a cooling rack on top. Use a sharp knife to gently work the cookie from the mold. Cool on the wire rack.
- While cookies are cooling, chop a chocolate bar. Set up a sauce pan by filling it about 1/3 full with water and set a Pyrex bowl on top. You can add a wooden spoon between the bowl and pot to allow steam to escape a bit. Add the chopped chocolate into the Pyrex bowl and allow it to melt. Use a spoon to drizzle chocolate on top of the Madeleine cookies. Allow the chocolate to set on the cookies. Enjoy!
- Use a spoon to drizzle chocolate on top of the Madeleine cookies. Allow the chocolate to set on the cookies. Enjoy!
Notes
SWEETIE PIE AND CUPCAKES FAVORITE PRODUCTS
This recipe was adapted from the book The Art of French Baking by Ginette Mathiot
Madeleine Pan, Non-stick
Baking Cooling Rack
Pyrex Bowl Set of 4Tried this recipe?
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