I have been making pumpkin chocolate chip cookies for years, but I have never found a recipe that I loved enough that it was worth sharing with you. That changed today, my friends. After tinkering with several recipes, I found that this one packed the most flavor and, if you have a tender hand, it also has the best texture. Not only that, but with a full cup of pumpkin, I think these cookies may actually be classified as a health food.

This was posted by my blogging friend Sherron at Simply Gourmet Photography. Don’t look at her site. Ever. Because if you do, I may lose you forever as a reader, and that would be so sad. It’s just that her pictures are sooooo compelling. Anyway, enough about her. This is about me  you. And these cookies. Let’s get baking.

To start with, we have to have one of these:

In general, you should only roast sugar pie pumpkins. They are small, cute, uncarveable, and perfect for making your own pumpkin puree. The pumpkin featured above is called a Cinderella Pumpkin. It’s beautiful, but not really what I recommend for roasting because it seems to be 99% water. The end result is not nearly as much pumpkin as I’d like, but I get more by roasting it than I do by throwing it in the compost pile. If you are going to roast a pumpkin, just buy the tiny ones. You’ll thank me later as you’ll get almost as much pumpkin puree from a couple small ones as I got from this ginormous one!

Preheat your oven to 350 and throw the whole pumpkin in the oven on a foil lined baking sheet.

Bake for 20-40 minutes, or until you can insert a knife without too much trouble. The actual timing for that will depend on the size of your pumpkin. Once you an insert a knife, remove the pumpkin from the oven, and cut it into several good-sized pieces. The idea is to hasten the cooking time by allowing it to cook from the inside out. Bake until the flesh is easily pierced with a butter knife. For this pumpkin, that meant another hour in the oven. Sugar pumpkins will require much less baking time.

Remove from the oven and let cool. Seriously. Let it cool all the way unless you’re a masochist who likes burning the flesh off your fingers.

Ignore the huge bottle of vodka in the background. I promise I’m not a drunkard. It’s for making this. No, really. I swear it is!

Remove the skin and seeds from the pumpkin. Place the remainder of the flesh in a separate bowl.

And here is where it gets fun. And by fun, I mean messy. At this point you can toss all your pumpkin puree into a food processor and let whirl until it’s really smooth. If it’s still too watery at that point, place several paper towels in a strainer that has been set over a large bowl. Pour the pumpkin onto the paper towels and let sit until the pumpkin is the desired consistency.

OR…. you can be super cool like me and use this nifty KitchenAid attachment. First, put the pumpkin in a strainer to let some of the excess moisture drain out. Easier to do that now than later.

Then, feed the pumpkin through the shoot of the fruit and vegetable strainer. You won’t have any waste. In one bowl, the pumpkin will be more watery. In another, it will be more solid. The solid pumpkin is ready for immediate use.

After you’ve extruded all your pumpkin, set a strainer lined with paper towels on top of a large bowl and pour the watery pumpkin mixture through the paper towels. Let rest for 1 hour, or until pumpkin is the constancy you desire.

And voila! Enough pumpkin to get you through the baking season! I got about 8 cups of pumpkin puree from this haul. I gave half of it to my mom because she’s awesome (hi mom!) and saved the rest for making all kinds of amazing pumpkin-filled goodies to share with you. Like the soup that I shared on Thursday. You read about that, right? If not, here it is.

I love, love, LOVE these pancakes from allrecipes.com! If you toss in some chocolate chips, then I love them even more. Drizzled with hot maple syrup and covered in sweetened whipped cream, this is my all time favorite winter breakfast. Make these using canned or home cooked pumpkin. Because this recipe makes a lot of pancakes, I recommend saving some in the freezer for a lazy-day weekend when you want all the goodness of a home cooked breakfast without all the work.

For the most part, I followed the recipe just as directed, but when I make it again (and believe me, I’ll be making this again soon!) I think I’ll try cutting the sugar by 1/4 to 1/2. Try it as directed first and then decide if you agree! Also, 1 cup of oil is pretty steep, so I opted to remove some of that. I didn’t miss it at all.

By the way, this makes 2 large loaves.