Everything remotely popular online is deemed “viral” nowadays — from a video racking up a measly million views to memes that ended up defining the first month of a whole presidential campaign. Some recipes, like the recent cucumber salad explosion, go bona-fide viral, captivating the attention of foodies on social media for… at least a week. But recently a recipe for pumpkin chocolate chip cookies got me thinking about what “viral” recipes were like before the internet. And also, how do recipes go viral in a family — in a friend group?

Every year, my friend Maya Kosoff makes the same recipe for pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. And so do dozens of the folks (the number is over 100 at this point) to whom she has sent it to over the years. A few years ago, I caught onto her fall tradition of making them (although she admits to baking them year-round) and posting them on her Instagram and Twitter. I even started noticing our mutual friends getting in on it, posting their attempts at the cookies. It has become such a thing that she’s written about it on her blog here and here.

What are the pumpkin chocolate chip cookies like?

It’s a family recipe — not her family recipe, but a friend’s. She writes about other similar pumpkin cookie recipes online that may come close, but do not replicate the flavor and texture of these. The nature of recipes that get passed down is you never really know where they originated — even if it was on the back of a box, bag or can. After doing some light digging myself, I couldn’t find others quite like it. The cookies are squat, craggy mounds; irregularly shaped and studded with chocolate. They don’t spread the way a sugar cookie does — where you’re likely to get close to a circle after baking, even if you don’t try too hard. Little appendages of baked batter reach out of them, only adding to their rustic charm.

I love a recipe that starts with “Combine all ingredients in bowl.” (How many of your family recipes start like that?) But their simplicity belies their power. They are plush, bright orange and actually pumpkin-y tasting, which is a feat since pumpkin is so bland. They break one of my cardinal rules of chewy cookies: avoid water. (There’s a ton of water in puréed pumpkin.) But since this is a cake-y cookie, we’re not so worried about that. That moisture contributes to a plush, tender crumb.

The reason behind these cookies’ popularity

These cookies have to be up there with one of the shortest recipes I’ve ever filmed for social media — maybe five minutes to make the batter? They will be my go-to for a last minute offering for fall occasions to which I’m already running late. And everything goes down with one bowl, few other dishes, and ingredients you probably have in your house right now. Plus, all the measurements easily remembered numbers with few fractions — and it uses a whole can of pumpkin and a whole bag of chocolate chips! Let’s celebrate that!

The first time I tried my hand at making these pumpkin chocolate chip cookies I thought, Mmm, these are pretty good! And then I realized I fully left out the butter. (These gaffes happens more often than you might think!) They were actually not bad that way, in case you were wondering! “The recipe is truly so forgiving,” Maya says. “It can be made vegan easily, either by omitting butter by accident or subbing for a vegan alt, and it tastes the same.”

Maya is the co-founder of the editorial consultancy 18 Olives, a writer (here’s her Substack) and one of the very first subscribers to this here newsletter, so I’m BUZZING that she has agreed to share the recipe here and answer some of my questions about it.

Eric: Can you tell me some of the history of this recipe? 

Maya: I got the recipe from my high school best friend’s mom, Sandra. Whenever I’d go over to my friend Andrea’s house in high school, Sandra, who has boundless energy for a mother of four, would be running around, often in the kitchen, where she’d be baking one of two things: brownies in individual silicone molds the shape of Hershey kisses (lol) (also relevant is that we grew up in Hershey, Pennsylvania), or pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. My mom then reposted the pumpkin chocolate chip cookie recipe to her Facebook page, which is where I went to find it for years, until I took a screenshot, forgot my Facebook password, and eventually I put it in a Notes app in my phone, where it still lives today when someone asks for it.

These came on my Instagram radar a few years ago. When did they start popping off and were you surprised?

I have sent the recipe for these cookies to probably ten dozen people over the past decade. It’s really funny — there are a few dozen people I know online (and some in real life) who reliably make the cookies every fall and tag me on Instagram when they do. It’s very moving to me — they’ve saved the recipe and they look forward to making them! That’s so special. You have to really love a recipe to keep it saved so you can ritually make it every fall. 

Then their friends see the cookies and ask for the recipe and it spreads. Strangers on Twitter have DMed me to tell me they make the cookies with their kids. Speaking of which, I think they really started popping off back when Twitter was a healthier social network. I have a bunch of followers there (probably from my days in journalism, but like, maybe also just because my tweets are really engaging and funny. Idk, who knows, who can say?) That certainly helped spread the recipe to wider corners of the internet than I’d normally have the reach for. 

Why do you think it has such a life among your friends and followers? 

This isn’t like some grandiose cultural theory but I feel like in the past 10 years autumn/autumnal flavors/autumnal foods have become commodified or romanticized or somehow culturally significant in a way that I have a hard time explaining or rationalizing. Maybe it’s the disappearance of fall weather with climate change. Maybe it’s people searching for comfort wherever they can find it. Maybe it’s soothing to indulge in commodified, monocultural basic-ness. Maybe it’s late-stage capitalism. God, is this rumination what you hoped for when you initially reached out to me??? 

Anyway, the cookies tend to evoke a degree of amazement from people. I think it’s because they’re SO simple to make, extremely hard to fuck up, and decidedly not cookie-like. They are cake-y, or almost pudding-y, or muffin top-y — although I worked at Panera Bread in high school and their pumpkin muffin tops (RIP??) were not nearly as moist and chewy and sumptuous as the cookies. It’s hard to eat just one. If I bake a full batch for me and my boyfriend I try to take some of the cookies to friends so we don’t eat them all in a few days ourselves. When I worked in an office (also RIP???) I would always bring them in — at Vanity Fair several people would Slack me every fall to be like “please tell me when you’re bringing in cookies so I know to come to the office.” 

You call the cookies “low-key hideous but beautiful” — why is that?

Look at them! They’re little orange brown clusters. They don’t photograph well (for me). Some people make them and they look great! I credit this to my lack of giving a shit about using a cookie scoop. Usually I’m just two-spooning it, plopping the dough down on the cookie sheet to get it in the oven. It’s sort of amusing to me that they’ve spread via social media, a platform where food usually has to be some kind of ~aesthetic~ or at least nice-looking to trend or for someone to ask you for the recipe, whereas my cookies are just like … kind of ugly.

There’s no beautiful buttercream frosting on top. These aren’t gracing the cover of Bon Appétit anytime soon. I feel like a Great British Bake-Off judge would call them “stodgy.” Still, I’m charmed by them. I love their deep burnt orange color. I love how they taste, especially when you slightly underbake them. I love all my memories associated with them. I love how much joy they seem to bring the people who make them. So they’re kind of beautiful to me. 

Here’s the recipe from Maya, unedited, in its aforementioned Notes app format. With the greatest respect to her and Sandra, I have made very, very small updates to fit in the style of EGO. I bumped up the salt level, and help people avoid over-mixing which will result in a tough cookie. I do this all while trying to maintain the simplicity and deliciousness of this wonderful recipe. You can find it right below this one.

Did you make these pumpkin chocolate chip cookies? I want to see! Tag me @easygayoven on Instagram and TikTok!

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

Print Recipe

Makes about 24 cookies

Ingredients

• 8 tablespoons unsalted butter softened (113 grams)
• 1 cup granulated sugar (220 grams)
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice optional, see note
• 3/4 teaspoon Diamond Crystal kosher salt 1/2 teaspoon for table salt
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 cups puréed pumpkin from one 15-ounce can, see note
• 2 cups all-purpose flour (260 grams)
• 1 1/2 cups chocolate chips plus more for topping (from one 12-ounce bag)

Instructions

• Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line two half-sheet trays with parchment paper.
• In a large mixing bowl, beat the butter with a rubber spatula to loosen it up, then beat in the sugar, cinnamon, pumpkin pie spice (if using), salt, baking soda and baking powder.
• Add the vanilla and puréed pumpkin to the bowl and whisk until combined. (The mixture may begin to look split. Don’t worry, it’ll come back together with the flour.)
• Using the rubber spatula, fold in the flour until just a few streaks of white remain, then fold in the chocolate chips just until evenly incorporated.
• Dole out eight dough balls per tray, about 3 tablespoons each, in a staggered formation. (I like to use a 1.5-ounce cookie scoop but you can also use two spoons to scoop and scrape them out.) Top each dough ball with 4 or 5 of the remaining chocolate chips, if desired.
• Bake, one tray at a time, for 13 or 14 minutes, until they look just dry on the tops. Allow to cool on the tray for 5 to 10 minutes then carefully transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

Notes

There are many recipes online for pumpkin pie spice, and really, you can customize it to your tastes and what you have on hand. Here’s one that I used.

I used Libby’s pumpkin purée, which is the most common at American stores and the one Maya uses as well. If you use the brands from Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods, they tend to be a little bit more watery, so you may have to build in 1 or 2 more minutes in the oven.

You can get more cookies per batch if you make 2/2.5-tablespoon dough balls, just shorten the baking time by a minute or two.