Mascarpone Cookies with Pumpkin

During fall, I make my banana bread and favorite chocolate chip cookies on repeat, but I enjoy incorporating pumpkin baked goods into rotation. But sometimes pumpkin can be overdone in fall desserts. That’s why I really appreciate this mascarpone cookie recipe. It uses pumpkin for flavor and soft texture but is topped with a homemade espresso frosting that sets it apart from your typical fall dessert. Especially if you’re a tiramisu fan, these cookies will be a huge hit.

“What is Mascarpone?” And other FAQs

Before we dive in, let’s get the facts straight about mascarpone and its role in these pumpkin cookies!

Mascarpone Cookie Ingredient List

The recipe card contains all the steps and ingredients, but below are a few key items that bring flavor to these tiramisu cookies:

• Pure vanilla extract or vanilla bean paste – In an online baking class I took once, Christina Tosi of Milk Bar taught us that you don’t need expensive vanilla extract for good flavor. So the extract from your local grocery store is perfectly fine for this recipe. I never taste much difference between pricier extracts and more basic ones.
• Instant espresso powder and unsweetened cocoa powder – These two simple ingredients help bring in the feel and flavors of tiramisu in this cookie recipe. 
• Creamy mascarpone cheese – Mascarpone is a sweet cream that has similarities to American cream cheese. However, mascarpone, which is sometimes called Italian cream cheese, has a higher fat content (about 20% more) than its American cousin. American cream cheese is also more tangy and firm than mascarpone. Mascarpone is made from butterfat and leaves a noticeably velvety mouth texture behind after you eat it.

Steps for Making the Cookie Dough

Preheat oven to 350°F.  

In a large mixing bowl, whisk together your flour, cocoa powder, espresso powder, baking powder, baking soda, pumpkin pie spice, and salt. Set aside.

In the bowl of a stand mixer or using an electric mixer, cream butter and granulated sugar until just combined, about 60 seconds on medium speed. For best results, use room temperature butter for creaming. 

In a small bowl, whisk together your pumpkin puree, egg yolk, and vanilla and rum extracts. Pour it into the large bowl of creamed butter and sugar, and beat all wet ingredients together on medium-speed until just combined.

Add your dry flour mixture ingredients to the bowl and stir on a low setting until just combined. Use a spatula to finish incorporating your dry into your wet ingredients.

Scoop dough and roll it into balls. Place balls of dough onto unlined cookie sheet.

Bake cookies for about 14 minutes, or until they bounce back slightly if you touch them.

Remove cookie pans from oven and keep cookies on the baking sheet for about five more minutes before transferring them to a wire rack to fully cool. Shape with round cookie cutter or top of a drinking glass to fix any jagged or uneven sections on their edges.

Why You’ll Love these Pumpkin Mascarpone Cookies

If you’re a fan of tiramisu, you’ll especially appreciate these soft, tender cookies. 

The flavor combos of coffee (from the espresso powder), pumpkin, pumpkin spice, and hint of chocolate from the cocoa powder together make for a great flavored cookie.

And in the frosting recipe, you’ll see rum extract. This isn’t a need-to-have, but it does add a little “oomph” to your flavors. Plus, many tiramisu recipes call for rum or rum extract.

But if you don’t have the extract, you can skip it. I don’t recommend using actual rum here. Extracts are much more concentrated versions of the flavors they recreate. You would have to add a lot of rum to your frosting to achieve the same effect. Doing that could really water down your consistency and make it runny. 

For similar reasons, I used espresso powder in this recipe instead of part of a cup of coffee. Too much liquid can create problems in the texture of cream-based desserts and sweet treats.

Mascarpone Espresso Frosting 

When making the mascarpone frosting, I highly recommend using a chilled mixing bowl and chilled beaters OR chilled bowl and whisk attachment of a stand mixer.

If you’ve ever made homemade whipped cream, you’ll know that using a cold bowl and whisks is key to getting the proper consistency.  

If you want to also color some of the frosting orange, whip up all of your mascarpone espresso frosting at once. Put half of it in your piping bag and add a few drops of orange food gel to your remaining bowl of frosting. Mix it and then add it to another piping bag.  

Wilton, Chef Master, and Americolor food gels would all work well. 

I used Wilton tips 1M and 32, an open star tip, for decorating.

Once decorated, you can amp up the flavors of these finished cookies by dusting the tops of these pumpkin-flavored cookies with cocoa powder.

You could play with that, though.

If you want more spice, you could mix pumpkin spice with cocoa. Or use pumpkin spice by itself. Or you could do a dusting of espresso powder to amp up the coffee flavor. The possibilities are endless but all will be pretty delicious!

More Dessert Recipes

Try these mini pumpkin muffins, dusted with cinnamon sugar, if you’re looking for more easy pumpkin-themed recipes.

And these brown butter sugar cookies are another simple and delicious cookie recipe you can easily make at home.

 

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This recipe was originally published in October of 2021 and updated in November of 2023.