Happy October you guys!! It's my favourite month of the year and like Anne Shirley Cuthbert said "I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers!" The leaves are slowly but surely turning colourful, the wind is crisp and pumpkins are absolutely everywhere! So like every year when autumn hits I get out all my favourite pumpkin recipes and this is definitely one of them. So without further ado, let's get started.

Here's what you'll need:

- 340g pureed Hokaido pumpkin (peel it before you steam it :) )
- 375g all purpose flour
- 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp salt
- 2 tsp pumpkin pie spice *
- 1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1/4 tsp ground ginger
- 170g butter (unsalted)
- 200g brown sugar
- 100g caster sugar
- 1 egg
- 2 tsp maple syrup

For the icing:

- 150g icing sugar
- 3 - 4 tbsp water

Preheat your oven to 200°C.

Mix the dry ingredients, flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and spices in a bowl until well combined.

In a big mixing bowl, beat the butter and both sugars together until you've got a creamy batter. Add in the egg, maple syrup and pumpkin puree and continue mixing for about 3 minutes (I used a handheld electric mixer so it might take you longer to achieve a smooth batter if you do this the old fashioned way ;) )

Add the dry ingredients in with the wet and keep mixing until you've got a smooth orange batter. It's slightly sticky and that's just as it should be :)

Line a baking tray with greeseproof paper. One tablespoon of batter makes one big cookie. When putting the cookie dough on your baking tray make sure you leave a bit of room between them as they will rise quite a bit.

Bake at 200°C for about 15 minutes. They should still feel quite soft to the touch when you take them out of the oven. Leave them to cool on a wire rack and only add the icing (which is obviously optional) once your cookies have completely cooled down.

For the icing you simply combine the sugar and water and mix until you've got a gloopy white consistency.