Pumpkin Spice Snickerdoodles with French Vanilla Chai Glaze

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These pumpkin spice snickerdoodles have a French vanilla chai glaze that makes these already delicious cookies even more delicious! They’re chewy and fluffy, delicate, shiny, and absolutely, perfectly spiced. Perhaps the loveliest cookie to serve with coffee on a crisp Autumn day, and definitely the very best cookie at the Halloween party!

Let’s take a traditional snickerdoodle recipe and dress it up for Fall!

7 glazed cookies on lace, beside a pumpkin gourd.

Contents hide

1 How to Make These Snickerdoodles – Step by Step

2 Common Questions

3 A Few Tips

4 A Few More Lovely Pumpkin Recipes

5 Pumpkin Spice Snickerdoodles with French Vanilla Chai Glaze

Heaven knows I love pumpkin spice. I don’t care if it makes me square. I have so many tasty pumpkin desserts like pumpkin cheesecake mousse, pumpkin flan, mini-pumpkin pies, and even pumpkin-spiced cocktails like this precious white rum and vanilla White Pumpkin cocktail!

October first, I go FULL PUMPKIN SPICE… until I start craving apples… and butternut squash… and every other kind of Autumn cocktail. But until then, it’s pumpkin spice snickerdoodles with my coffee, and everything else.

16 balls of sugar-coated dough on a parchment-lined baking pan.

How to Make These Snickerdoodles – Step by Step

1. In a medium mixing bowl, whisk together 3 cups flour, 1 tsp. baking soda, 2 tsp. cream of tartar, 1½ tsp. pumpkin spice and ½ tsp. kosher salt. Set aside.

2. In a large mixing bowl, combine 1 cup (8 oz.) softened, unsalted butter, 1 cup white granulated sugar, ½ cup brown sugar, 2 tsp. real vanilla extract, 1 egg, and 1 egg yolk.

3. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients.

4. Mix thoroughly with your hands until all ingredients are combined into a dough. Either place in a covered container or wrap with cellophane and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

A collage of 4 numbered images showing how to make pumpkin spice snickerdoodle batter.

5. Preheat oven to 350 F. (175 C.) Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and remove the dough from the fridge. In a small bowl, mix 4 tbsp. white granulated sugar, 1 tbsp. Sugar in the Raw (optional – if not adding, simply add another tbsp. white granulated sugar) and 2 tsp. pumpkin spice. Roll 1 tbsp. of dough in your hands and coat in sugar/pumpkin spice until you have about 16 balls.

6. Place dough balls on a baking sheet about 1 inch apart. Don’t flatten them, unless you want a thinner cookie.

7. Bake for 7-12 minutes (checking the bottom of a cookie after 7 minutes to see if it’s golden brown – if not, place it back in the oven). Bake cookies in batches, and after each batch, leave them to sit for 5 minutes, then remove them from the pan to cool on a rack for 20 minutes.

8. While snickerdoodles cool, make the glaze. Add 1 teabag of Twinings French Vanilla Chai Tea to 4 oz. of hot water and let it steep for 10 minutes.

A collage of 4 numbered images showing how to make pumpkin spice snickerdoodles.

9. In a small bowl, combine 1 cup powdered sugar, 2 tbsp. French vanilla chai tea, 1 tsp. real vanilla extract and a sprinkle of cinnamon.

10. Gently glaze the cookies with a pastry brush. If you don’t have a pastry brush, you can dip them in the glaze, but make sure to let it drip off a lot of glaze, otherwise, it will be too thick. You want just a thin layer. Place cookies in the refrigerator for 20-30 minutes to quickly dry the glaze.

2 numbered images showing how to glaze pumpkin spice snickerdoodles.

They will be perfectly moist and tasty for 1 week in a sealed container. After a week, they’ll start to lose their moisture, but will still be delicious until about 2 weeks when they’ll become a bit stale.

Common Questions

1. What’s pumpkin spice made of?

You may be surprised to discover that pumpkin spice doesn’t include any pumpkin at all (this fact just shocked a friend of mine to her core). It’s simply the spice that makes pumpkin taste like pumpkin pie. That wonderful Autumn mix of spices we all associate with Halloween and Thanksgiving.

If you can’t find pre-mixed pumpkin spice in your food store, simply combine 4 tsp. of ground cinnamon, 2 tsp. ground ginger, 1 tsp. ground cloves and ½ tsp. ground nutmeg.

2. Can snickerdoodles be frozen?

Freezing the cookies will, unfortunately, dry them out, however, you can freeze the cookie dough and make cookies at another time! Simply freeze the dough in cellophane after mixing. To thaw, place dough in the refrigerator overnight (or for about 8 hours) before scooping, rolling, and baking.

3. Do they need the glaze to be tasty?

Not at all! They’re incredible cookies all on their own, without the glaze… but goodness, the glaze makes them extra, EXTRA special. It’s the difference between hearing people at the Halloween party say “Now that’s a tasty snickerdoodle” and discovering guests smuggling a dozen out in their pockets.

8 baked snickerdoodles on a baking rack.

A Few Tips

1. This recipe calls for 4 kinds of sugar, but you can use only 3 if you like.

I use both white granulated sugar and brown sugar in the cookie dough, powdered sugar in the glaze, then white granulated sugar and Sugar in the Raw in the cookie coating because it gives the snickerdoodles a more interesting texture. But if you don’t want to pick up a 4th kind of sugar, you can just use white granulated sugar instead of Sugar in the Raw.

2. Don’t skip the refrigeration step!

Once your dough is done, you might be tempted to just start scooping… stop right there! Wrap that dough in cellophane or place it in a sealed container and refrigerate it for at least 30 minutes. It’s far too warm after it’s been mixed, and without refrigerating, you’ll just have unappetizing, deflated, flat cookie disks instead of tasty, moist, chewy pumpkin spice snickerdoodles if you put them right in the oven.

3. Ovens vary, so watch your cookies carefully while they bake.

I find that, depending on your oven, these cookies can take between 7 minutes and 12 minutes to be perfect. That’s quite a range, so give them 7 minutes, then check the bottom of one. It should be a light, golden brown.

The texture will feel REALLY soft and undercooked, even if they’re perfect. They harden on the outside and stay nice and chewy on the inside as they cool, so don’t use the texture as a gauge – just the color of the bottoms.

Fingers holding a snickerdoodle showing the brown bottom above a baking pan.

Fingers holding a bitten, glazed cookie above a pile of others.

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