TGIF! Have a cookie.

There's only one way to begin this post:

Sweet jesus on a cross burnt butter smells amazing.

Ok now that I've gotten that out of my system.

HAPPY FRIDAY EVERYONE! Have a cookie.

So my mission behind these cookies was to show Mum that she does actually like pumpkin seeds. She thinks she doesn't. When she gets home in another hour or so, she is going to, haha, pun very much intended, eat her words.

I debated which recipe to use to prove her incorrectness. There are Date and Pumpkin Seed cookies (yum AND vegan), Pumpkin Seed Cake (which looks very interesting and is also a cool green colour), and Pumpkin Seed Lace Cookies (beautiful and also vegan but the recipe was such a small amount I was worried about quadrupling it un-tasted). The runner up was Peanut Butter Pumpkin Seed via The Guardian which has been printed and added to the recipe folder. But in the end, the sparkly tiara and sash went to BROWN BUTTER PUMPKIN SEED COOKIES.

This is a symbolic interpretation. Pumpkin Seeds. Brown Butter. Voila.

To explain the reasoning behind the difficult final choice, I decided that if my mission was to prove that pumpkin seeds were delicious, then I should chose a cookie that was simple, one that highlighted the pumpkin seeds, one that let them speak for their little green selves. I mean, everyone likes peanut butter cookies, its a fact of life. You put pretty much anything in a peanut butter cookie, it's still going to taste like a really yummy peanut butter cookie. But a cookie in which Pumpkin Seeds themselves were the star ingredient? Ahh, dear reader, THAT would be the ultimate test.

I hereby insert a proactive apology to my Lovely Librarians (you guys like the name? I'm using it.) because you are probably not going to get any of these. I'm calling it right now, she's gonna eat them all. If the smell of heaven wafting from the kitchen all the way to the library (the current Beetle location) is any indication of how good these are going to taste, not even an emergency cookie delivery tomorrow morning is going to work. They'll be gone before then. Sorry too, to the aunt and uncle that are coming to visit tomorrow afternoon. Not happening. I'll make you something else.

I also made them to prove once and for damn all that Pumpkin in all its forms is absolutely not something that can only be eaten during the autumn and winter months. As soon as school starts in September every recipe site is chock full of slideshows featuring pumpkins and squash. Yes, fine, it's not seasonal year round, but that does NOT mean it can't, or shouldn't, be eaten.

Let me give you an example. What's a food we eat exclusively during autumn, specifically November? Stuffing. Now, I defy anyone on this earth to tell me that stuffing wouldn't be just as delicious, say, tonight, for dinner. See? PUMPKIN IS AWESOME YEAR ROUND YOU GUYS. Not only is it (unlike stuffing) crazy good for you, it is (very much like stuffing) freaking delicious.

Tiny yet so powerful.
Like Warrior Beetles.

Fun nutritional facts about Pumpkin and Pumpkin Seeds:

• Pumpkin has an almost embarrassingly large amount of Vitamin A
• Add to that fiber, beta-carotene, Vitamin C, Serotonin (happy!), Potassium (muscles!), Zinc (bones!) and a bazillion other important minerals that are all listed here.
• It has the free radicals that aid in . . . duh duh duh . . . WRINKLE PREVENTION
• subnote: I've been using anti-wrinkle cream since I turned 25, I'll be 30 in October. Do I look 16? Unfortunately yes. Do I still obsess over my skin care routine? Absolutely. BRING ON FOODS I LIKE THAT WILL KEEP ME FROM GETTING CROW'S FEET.
• The seeds themselves are crazy high in protein, reduce bad cholesterol, and reduce inflammation.
• Something I just learned but which just may come in handy: If you ever get a tapeworm, eat pumpkin seeds! Huh. Squirm-inducing but useful. And let's face it, if I god FORBID ever get a tapeworm, it's going to take everything in the universe to keep me from ripping out my insides myself. Including Pumpkin Seeds.

So, now that we've established that Pumpkin Seeds are healthy and that everyone should stop what they are doing IMMEDIATELY and go eat some, I present

WHOLE WHEAT BROWN BUTTER PUMPKIN SEED COOKIES

Adapted from In Jennie's Kitchen

2 sticks butter, browned in a saucepan and cooled
1 1/2 cup light brown sugar
2 eggs
2 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1 cup pumpkin seeds, lightly toasted

Preheat the oven to 375ºF. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper; set aside.

Add the butter to a small pot over medium heat. Cook until the butter is melted, a deep golden color, and little browned bits begin to appear. Pour the butter into a heat-safe bowl and let it cool until barely warm, about 30 minutes.

Add the flour, baking soda, salt and cloves to a small bowl, and stir to combine.

See those little brown bits in the batter? Those are little
pieces of brown butter. Yep. I know.

Measure brown sugar into a mixing bowl and beat in the butter, then the eggs. Beat on high until light and fluffy, 2 to 3 minutes.





Add the flour mixture to the bowl. On low speed, mix until the flour is completely mixed in, about 1 minute. Stir in the pumpkin seeds.

The original recipe said to use a mixer, but I would do it by hand.
Otherwise, you risk breaking up the seeds,
and the visual impact is lost. Sob.

Drop heaping rounds of dough three inches apart on the prepared baking sheets. Bake for 12 to 13 minutes, until the edges are golden and the bottoms are lightly browned. Remove sheet from the oven and let the cookies cool on the pan for 2 minutes. Using a spatula, transfer the cookies to a wire rack to finish cooling completely.

I mean, talk about visual impact.

BEETLE NOTES

I love that this recipe already used whole wheat flour, that might have swayed the final choice, actually. I doubled it because it said "makes 12 cookies" and that's a silly amount of cookies to make, in my opinion. I tripled the ground cloves because I always bump up the spices. I have never tried a recipe that used enough.

For future batches, I could switch out the brown sugar for agave, and if I wanted the cookie to be capable of curing the common cold, old age, AND cancer in one bite, use pumpkin instead of butter. But it felt like a "play it by the recipe" day, and, if I'm honest, I really just wanted the kitchen to smell like burnt butter. (See the second sentence of this post, above.)

12-13 minutes means at 12 minutes PRECISELY they will be done. If you leave them in for a nanomillisecond longer, they will go brown on the bottoms. Two nanomilliseconds and they will be more than brown on the bottoms. Not that that's a bad thing, but I would like it known that I took the proverbial cookie bullet for you guys here. Your cookies will be better because of me. You're welcome. My Lovely Librarians, I'd like to say that Mum will get the crispy ones and you will get the less-crispy, but . . . again, see above.

Blanket note that these are, sadly, not Beetle Friendly. Pumpkin, as I've noted, absolutely is. But Pumpkin Seeds, not so much. Them being . . . seeds . . . and all. So I shall have to live vicariously through everyone else who tries this recipe and swoons with deliciousness and newfound health and energy.

If you need me, I'll be spreading pumpkin puree on a piece of hardtak in the corner, weeping quietly.