Pumpkin Patch Cookies!

My son and I are in a field trip co-op this year which means the first Friday of each month we go some place interesting, educational, and fun with a bunch of great friends! The moms take turns arranging each field trip, and I had the months of September and October. September was supposed to be a trip to a museum and a historic home at our state capitol. Unfortunately, our tour was canceled by the museum a few days before due to a certain virus which shall remain nameless.

For our October field trip I had planned a day at a farm and pumpkin patch down the road from our house, and it just happened to fall on the first day of October! There’s no place we’d rather be on October 1st than the pumpkin patch! Since the previous field trip had been cancelled, I was so hoping everything with the pumpkin patch would be extra special for our kiddos, and I decided to take a little treat: Pumpkin Cookies!

I’ve always been fascinated with the cut-out cookies that have the royal icing! Even though I make other kinds of cut-out cookies, I was hesitant to try the royal icing ones. I’ve watched numerous videos of “piping and flooding” only because it’s so mesmerizing, but I felt pretty sure that I would not enjoy decorating them as much as I enjoy watching other people decorate them. I was wrong! I finally tried them last week (on a whim the day before the field trip–typical me!), and LOVED it!

I used Memory Makin’ Momma’s recipe and it worked! The recipe makes a great dough that is so easy to work with. And the royal icing, while it did take some practice, was a winner too. Mind you, my cookies had soooo many flaws, but that didn’t really bother me because it was fun and it was a learning experience. I’ll keep practicing and fine-tuning.

My daughter got in the kitchen with me and we gave it a go! First, I tinted half of the icing with orange coloring and we practiced the border and flooding with a #5 icing tip. This was pretty comical because our first attempts were pretty messy and our icing was a tad too thick. No worries because I just scraped it off, thinned out the remaining icing, and started again. The more we practiced, the easier it got.

Once the icing was dry to the touch, we added the curvy lines with a #3 icing tip to make it look more like a pumpkin. Again, my icing was a smidge too thick, but there was no scraping it off at this point because I would have damaged the flooded area underneath. Let me tell you, making the lines go where you want them to go takes some getting used to, so some of mine got a little wonky!

After the lines were dry to the touch, I tinted some of rest of the white icing with brown and made the stems with a #3 tip.

And finally, once the stems were dry to the touch, I tinted the rest of the white icing with green and squiggled on some vines with a #1 tip.

It’s recommended that they dry overnight so that’s what I did and they were all so cute lined up and at attention when I walked into the kitchen the next morning.

I had all my packaging supplies ready for an assembly line. I used clear bags so the cookie could be seen through the bag since it was decorated. I then added fall tags with orange and green ribbons. The tags also came from Memory Makin’ Momma which she offers for $5 for a download! I purchased these (and many other styles) a couple of years ago and have been able to print them off as many times as I’ve wanted. It’s a great deal and really helps out with making gifts cute quickly. You can find her on Instagram and click on the “gift tags” button to see all her different styles.

And here is the finished product!

I put them in a basket to take to the pumpkin patch and handed them out after lunch. Actually, we bribed the kids for a group photo by telling them they would get their cookie after they smiled pretty. We even had a little guy join our photo who wasn’t in our school group, lol!

We had the BEST day and gorgeous weather to enjoy the corn maze, rat races, zipline, landslide, hay hills, corn cribs, hayride, tire swings, games, picnic, and……

PUMPKINS, of course!!!

Sadly, sugar triggers headaches for me, but these are so much fun to make, I’m ok with not eating them (well, mostly ok). My girl and I are already thinking of all the cute Christmas cookies we can make with this recipe. But for now, we’re going to just keep enjoying all things AUTUMN!

HAPPY FALL, Y’ALL!!!!