Pumpkin Cookies

This recipe is from my friend April. They are very yummy. My kids ate a lot of them. We made them before Thanksgiving and took them to all of their primary teachers.

INGREDIENTS
2 cups shortening
2 cups white sugar
2 cups canned pumpkin
2 eggs
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon salt
4 cups all-purpose flour

6 tablespoons butter
8 tablespoons milk
1 cup packed brown sugar
2 cups confectioners' sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

DIRECTIONS
Cream shortening, white sugar and pumpkin. Add eggs and mix well. Sift together the baking soda, ground cinnamon, salt and flour. Add to pumpkin mixture and mix well.
Drop from spoon to cookie sheet. Bake 10 minutes at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
To Make Frosting: Cook butter, milk, and brown sugar until dissolved. COOL and add confectioners' sugar and vanilla. Spread over warm cookies.

Brown Family Chocolate Chip Cookies

This recipe makes so much dough that I suggest you put them in ball shape on wax paper and freeze them. Once the dough has hardened, take the frozen dough balls and put them in a gallon zip lock bag and cook them whenever you want warm cookies! Adjust the baking time to 12 minutes if cooking frozen dough.

Cream Together:
1 cup shortening
1 cup butter
1 ½ cups sugar
1 ½ cups brown sugar
3 eggs
2 tsp vanilla

Mix together in a separate bowl:
4 ½ cups flour
1 ½ tsp baking soda
1 ½ tsp salt

Slowly mix dry ingredients in with wet ingredients. There is a lot of flour so take your time! Mix in 1 12 oz bag chocolate chips or 2 cups chocolate chips.

Bake at 375 degrees for 10 minutes.

Chocolate Chip Cookie Trick

This is not a recipe, but a technique to help make the best fresh chocolate chip cookies whenever you want. You can actually probably do it with other recipes as well, but I have not tried it. Here is what you do:

1. Make your normal cookie recipe (you might want to double it). My favorite recipe is actually huge and calls for 4 1/2 cups of flour. I will post it on here.

2. Get out sheets that will fit in your freezer. I use small cookie sheets or 13x9 pans.

3. Put wax paper on the cookie sheets or in the pans.

4. I use a cookie scoop but you can also use spoons. Make cookie balls and place them on the wax paper. You can put these very close and fit as many as you can.

5. Place the full pans in the freezer. It takes about 30 minutes and the dough is formed enough you can take them out and put them in zip lock freezer bags.

6. You should now have a full freezer bag of cookie dough balls. Whenever you want them, take out how many you want and cook them in the same heat usually needed and cook for about a minute longer. They turn out soooo good! Have fun!