Pumpkin Almond Flour Cookies {Vegan, Grain-Free, Oil-Free}

Tender, lightly sweet, and all-around perfect pumpkin almond flour cookies. Made in one bowl, in no time flat, they are also grain-free, oil-free, and vegan.

Healthy Pumpkin Cookies: Vegan, Grain-Free & Gluten-Free

At last. ‘Tis the official season of PUMPKIN!

Some (e.g., my husband) might say I have a pumpkin problem. The reason? I eat it all the time, all year round. A dozen large cans of pumpkin in our pantry? Sounds perfectly reasonable to me. It’s so good in so many things that I don’t want to run low.

Fewer than a dozen cans is low :).

But at this time of year, no one will look askance at my canned pumpkin-laden shopping cart, nor will you, fair readers, be alarmed if  I post pumpkin recipes without restraint in the days and weeks to come.

Allow me to begin the pumpkin madness with some irresistible Pumpkin Almond Flour Cookies!

Healthy & Convenient Highlights of These Cookies

These homey cookies are:

• Grain-Free
• Vegan
• Gluten-Free
• Oil-Free
• Made in One Bowl
• Super Fast & Easy to Make
• Tender, Flavor-Packed, and SO very delicious

They are more than healthy enough for breakfast or an energizing pre-workout snack, but also blissful for a late afternoon treat or after-dinner dessert.

The inspiration for thee cookies came from my 3-ingredient Almond Flour Cookies from several months back. They are a favorite at our house because they are so easy, so good, so healthy, and so versatile with the addition of different spices, zest and extracts.

Could I make them with pumpkin? Perhaps just 4 ingredients?

Several tests later, the answer was no. Were they edible? Yes. Did they look like cookies? More or less. But they weren’t right. Whereas the 3-ingredient almond flour cookies are perfect without any additional flavors, or other ingredients, for that matter, pumpkin almond flour cookies needed more, so I scrapped the notion of keeping the ingredients ultra-minimal and focused instead on making the finished cookies ultra-delicious.

Did it!

The ingredient list is longer, yes, but familiar and simple, too. The recipe was crying out for spice, so I added a full 1-1/2 teaspoons of pumpkin pie spice. You could use a combination of spices (e.g., cinnamon, ginger, allspice, nutmeg, cloves), adding up to 1-1/2 teaspoons total, in place of the pumpkin pie spice.

Another significant addition was coconut flour. I wanted the cookies to have lots of pumpkin (for the reasons mentioned at the beginning of this post), and a tender texture, but I also did not want a mushy texture, which is what I was getting with the all almond-flour versions.

The coconut flour addition balances the almond flour, resulting in cookies with  a fluffy, tender texture.

The dough comes together in minutes with nothing more than a spoon and a large bowl.

Scoop out heaping tablespoons of dough (I use a small cookie scoop, but a heaping tablespoon measure works fine, too). You can roll the dough into balls, if you want more uniform-shaped cookies.

Although it is entirely optional, I recommend sprinkling (or rolling, if shaping into balls) the dough mounds with coarse, raw sugar (also labeled turbinado sugar). The contrasting crunch is pretty stellar.

Following 16 to 20 minutes of baking at 325F, it’s pumpkin cookie time!

These cookies taste like sturdy-yet-tender, bite-size pumpkin pies. Yes, hard to resist. But you need not resist, as each cookie is packed with vitamins A & E, plus a decent dose of fiber and protein.

Here’s to pumpkin, and Happy Monday, everyone!

Related Posts: 

1. Chickpea Flour Pumpkin Muffins  {vegan, grain-free, oil-free}
2. Chocolate Pumpkin Pudding Cups {vegan, grain-free}
3. 3-Ingredient Black Bean Pumpkin Soup {vegan, oil-free}
4. Vegan Pumpkin Almond Flour Biscotti {keto option}
5. 3-Ingredient Almond Flour Cookies {vegan, oil-free, keto option}