Pumpkin Spice Cookies #Halloween #recipe @LeslieBudewitz

LESLIE: At Halloween, we think of tricks and treats, and tricks with treats. These simple drop cookies aren’t tricky at all, but they are a yummy treat full of fall flavors. And they’d be easy to make with kids. They freeze and travel well. Yield and baking time will depend on the size of your cookies, and how much batter you eat while you’re baking.

Wishing you a delightfully ghoulish week!

Here are a couple of fun treats from past years, Mummy Pizza Puffs and Veggie Skeleton with Brain Dip. Both are easy and cute -- no trick at all!

Pumpkin Spice Cookies

 2-1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice
1 cup brown sugar, firmly packed
½ cup white sugar
3/4 cup butter, softened
1 egg
1 cup pumpkin (canned is easiest)
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup raisins
½ cup walnuts, coarsely chopped
Heat oven to 300 degrees.

In a medium bowl, combine flour, baking soda, salt, and pumpkin pie spice.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, cream together the brown sugar, white sugar, and butter. Add the egg, pumpkin, and vanilla, and mix well. Gradually add the flour mixture, raisins, and walnuts, careful not to overmix.

Line a baking sheet with a silicon mat if you’d like. Drop batter by rounded tablespoons on to baking sheet, about 2 inches apart. Bake 22-24 minutes, until cookies are slightly browned along the edges and golden on the bottom. Immediately transfer to a cooling rack.

Makes 4-5 dozen, depending on size.

From the cover of CHAI ANOTHER DAY, Spice Shop Mystery #4 (Seventh St. Books): 

 Seattle Spice Shop owner Pepper Reece probes murder while juggling a troubled employee, her mother's house hunt, and a fisherman who's set his hook for her.

As owner of the Spice Shop in Seattle's famed Pike Place Market, Pepper Reece is always on the go. Between conjuring up new spice blends and serving iced spice tea to customers looking to beat the summer heat, she finally takes a break for a massage. But the Zen moment is shattered when she overhears an argument in her friend Aimee's vintage home decor shop that ends in murder. 

Wracked by guilt over her failure to intervene, Pepper investigates, only to discover a web of deadly connections that could ensnare a friend - and Pepper herself.

Leslie Budewitz is the author of the Food Lovers’ Village Mysteries and the Spice Shop Mysteries, and the winner of Agatha Awards in three categories. Death al Dente, the first Food Lovers' Village Mystery, won Best First Novel in 2013, following her 2011 win in Best Nonfiction. Her first historical short story, "All God's Sparrows," won the 2018 Agatha Award for Best Short Story, and is now nominated for a Macavity award; read it on her website. A past president of Sisters in Crime and a current board member of Mystery Writers of America, she lives in northwest Montana with her husband, a musician and doctor of natural medicine, and their cat, an avid bird-watcher.

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