One fall many years ago, I was given lots of pumpkins as a gift. At the time I was living in a big old house in St. Paul with six friends. For weeks we used them as decorations on our dining room table, in our family room and well, all over the house. The night before Halloween we carved some of the pumpkins into jack-o'-lanterns. There were still a dozen or left and I decided to cook each one. After a week of eating pumpkin bread, pumpkin cookies, pumpkin baked Alaska (I don't remember where I found that recipe!), a pumpkin cake and even pumpkin pickles (they turned out like watermelon pickles) my friends told me that I was banned from making pumpkin anything else.

Many years later, my favorite pumpkin recipe is Pumpkin Cookies with Browned Butter Frosting. It is a soft, moist cookie with a generous dollop of a browned butter frosting on top (don't worry—you don't need fresh pumpkin to make these delicious cookies).  Halloween treats aren't always just for kids!