Thanksgiving is just a couple days away and we are so excited to go home and celebrate with our family, our very large family! Just to give you an idea of how big our family is, we have 25 first cousins! Family get togethers are definitely not a small gathering. Our parents have the honor of hosting Thanksgiving every year. This year will be a typical Thanksgiving with a mere 47 people joining. It’s a lot of people in one house, but we wouldn’t have it any other way.
We believe a beautiful table is just as important as the meal you put on it. Growing up our mom always gave us sisters the job of decorating and setting the dinning tables. To this day it is still something we look forward to every Thanksgiving. This year we decided to add a little something special to the table for each guest. In place of our usual paper place cards, we made cookie place cards for each guest. Since it was for Thanksgiving a fall flavored cookie was a must. It wasn’t hard to decide what we wanted to make and we very quickly landed on pumpkin spice sugar cookies with a maple buttercream. The cookies would of course be shaped like pumpkins.
These pumpkin cookies are so easy to make, delicious and perfect for any fall occasion. Everyone loves sugar cookies, but why not try something different than the plain old sugar cookie. To decorate our pumpkins we used a large round piping tip for the body of the pumpkin and a small round tip for the stem. You can also use a small star tip to make the stem and add vines and leaves if you wish. The best thing about sugar cookies is that they are the perfect treat for kids to help make.
Next time you host a holiday or dinner party consider making sugar cookie place cards! You can find a cookie cutter in any shape imaginable so you are bound to find one that fits the theme of your party. You don’t want a fall flavored cookie, try our traditional sugar cookie recipe. If you make this recipe or create your own cookie place card, we would love to hear how they turned out! Comment below or tag us on Instagram or Facebook. Happy Baking!
Pumpkin Spice Sugar Cookies
Ingredients
- 3 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 2 tsp pumpkin pie spice
- 1 cup unsalted butter at room tempurature
- 1/2 cup granulated sugar
- 1/2 cup brown sugar
- 1 egg
- 1 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
- 1/4 cup pumpkin puree
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
- In a medium bowl combine the flour, baking powder and pumpkin pie spice.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer, fitted with the paddle attachement, cream the butter at medium speed until smooth. Add both sugars and mix until combined.
- Beat in the egg, vanilla and pumpkin until combined.
- With the mixer at low speed gradulaly add the flour mixture. You may need to stop and scrape the sides of the bowl throughout. Beat until the mixture is all incorporated and pulls away from the side of the bowl to create a ball around the paddle.
- Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerator for 20 minutes.
- Lightly flour your work surface and roll out the dough out until it’s about 1/4-inch thick. Using your selected cookie cutter, cut out the shapes and transfer the cookies to a non-stick cookie sheet placing 1-inch apart. Roll up the remaining scraps and repeat.
- Bake the cookies for about 8 minutes. The cookies should be nice and fluffy and light in color. You do NOT want the cookies to start to brown around the edges. Let the cookies cool a few minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely before frosting.
Maple Buttercream
Ingredients
- 2 cups unsalted butter slightly cold
- 2 pound bag of powdered sugar
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 tsp maple extract
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 2-3 tbsp heavy whipping cream
Instructions
- In a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream the butter. Start off at a low speed and then gradually increase until the butter is light in color and smooth. Use a rubber spatula to scrape the bowl as needed.
- Add the powdered sugar, one cup at a time, mixing at a low speed until fully incorporated before you add the next cup.
- Add the heavy cream (start with 2 tbsp), vanilla, maple and salt and beat at a low speed for about 20 seconds. If you feel your buttercream is too stiff you can add the third tablespoon of cream. Increase the speed to high and beat for about 3-5 minutes until the mixture is perfectly smooth and fluffy. Stop the mixer once to scrape the bowl.
- Stir the buttercream by hand to remove any air bubbles.
