Easy Pumpkin Breakfast Cookies (paleo, vegan, gluten-free)
Add these Easy Pumpkin Breakfast Cookies to your breakfast rotation! They’re paleo, vegan, and gluten-free, great for grab-and-go, and so filling!
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Around here, we have to keep breakfast interesting.
My son is perfectly content to make his own breakfast, and it’s the same thing pretty much every morning: 3 fried eggs and 2 nitrate-free sausage links.
On the other hand, my daughter prefers variety.
She’ll eat eggs with vigor… until she won’t.
And when she’s tired of eggs, it’s usually weeks or months before she’ll eat them again.
Like I said, we have to keep breakfast interesting around here.
How to Keep Breakfast Interesting
When I was growing up, we ate varied breakfasts. But of course, I grew up in the late 80s and early 90s, when processed food ruled the morning.
I had a variety of breakfast cereals to choose from — Frosted Flakes to Fruity Pebbles. The era of my childhood also debuted many toaster phenomena: the Toaster Strudel, Eggo Frozen Waffles, and Pop-Tarts come to mind.
But all of it?? Processed, processed, processed. Loaded with sugar. Fortified with synthetic vitamins.
To keep breakfast interesting for my family, I’ve had to take all the variety of the 80s and 90s packaged, ready to heat and eat foods and apply that principal to Real Food.
We have found that we all enjoy eating more than one thing for breakfast; so it’s never just a smoothie or just eggs or just a muffin.
So, I have my staples:
- pastured eggs or quiche
- nitrate-free breakfast sausage
- pastured bacon
- grass-fed yogurt
- fruit
- soaked oatmeal or overnight oats
- 5-Ingredient Paleo Breakfast Hash
And then, I have my side-liners (the things I can pair with my staples) to keep breakfast interesting.
- sourdough toast (which we can only buy seasonally)
- muffins, like my Paleo Orange Muffins or Keto White Chocolate Raspberry Muffins or Paleo Carrot Zucchini Muffins
- breakfast breads, like my Keto Lemon Blueberry Bread or Double Chocolate Coconut Flour Zucchini Bread
- donuts, like these Keto Chocolate Coconut Donuts or Gluten-Free Apple Cider Donuts
- Low-Carb Fluffy Belgian Waffles
- Paleo Chocolate Chip Pancakes
Having several options to rotate means breakfast can be varied, resulting in less burn-out in the mornings. So, breakfast might look like…
- eggs + muffins + fruit or overnight oats
- yogurt + a slice of breakfast bread + sausage
- waffles + bacon + fruit
- overnight oats + eggs
- hash + a a slice of breakfast bread or donuts
- pancakes + sausage or yogurt
- eggs + toast + yogurt
Or any variation of the above.
And now… We add Easy Pumpkin Breakfast Cookies to the mix!
Add easy Pumpkin Breakfast Cookies to your breakfast repertoire!
These Easy Pumpkin Breakfast Cookies are perfect for adding to the Fall breakfast rotation — giving us even more variety!
I can bake these during my Sunday afternoon meal prep. There’s no re-heating involved, so it saves time on busy weekday mornings.
They pair well with pretty much every breakfast protain staple we love: eggs, sausage or bacon, yogurt, or hash.
These easy breakfast cookies are loaded with nourishing ingredients: resistant starch cassava flour, filling nut or seed butter + extra nuts/seeds and dried coconut, fiber from the pumpkin and coconut flour, and of course, those spices! Swooooooon.
Before we get to the recipe, let’s discuss some of these ingredients and possible substitutions.
Cassava Flour: What is it? Where to find it? Is it low-carb/keto? What can I sub if I don’t have it?
Cassava flour (purchase here for the best price) might just be the Holy Grail of gluten-free and grain-free flours. It’s made from the cassava root — a tuber similar to potatoes and yams.
Native to South America, it’s a prized food known as manioc or yuca.
Cassava is grain-free, gluten-free, nut-free, dairy-free, soy-free, vegan, and vegetarian. And, it’s definitely paleo because it’s been a traditional staple in the diets of South American people for at least 1,400 years (source) — unlike other “paleo” flours such as almond flour.
It also has a mild a neutral flavor — unlike many other gluten-free and grain-free flours. So, in this way, it’s quite similar to wheat flour.
The reason cassava flour is so good for your gut is because it’s a resistant starch — meaning it feeds the flora in your gut. Basically, it’s food for probiotics and is considered a prebiotic fiber.
Where to find it? I purchase my cassava flour from Thrive Market for the absolute best price. This product also gives me consistently great results.
Otto’s is another brand that is also reputable, and you can find it on Amazon.
Is cassava flour low-carb/keto-friendly? No. There are 25 net grams of carbs per 1/4 cup. Remember… these are GOOD carbs. These microbiome-feeding carbs are necessary for a healthy gut! But if you need to stick with a low-carb flour, then this is not the recipe for you. Feel free to check out my other keto-friendly recipes!
What can I sub if I don’t have cassava flour? You *can* sub arrowroot powder or tapioca starch. But please keep in mind: these flours are void of nutrition. They are little more than emtpy carbs. Give the cassava flour a chance. I know you won’t be sorry!
Sweetener Options: Making these breakfast cookies lower in carbs with a sweetener swap.
I call for my favorite low-glycemic whole sweetener, coconut sugar, in this recipe.
Lately, I’ve been using coconut sugar or coconut syrup for all of my non-keto, sweet treats. (Use my coupon code NOURISHING to save 10% on coconut sugar and coconut syrup!)
If using coconut sugar, then, you have an additional 96 grams of carbohydrates in these Easy Pumpkin Breakfast Cookies. That works out to 5.6 grams of carbs per cookie (not counting the cassava, cranberries, pumpkin, etc. — just the sugar).
However, if you are avoiding even whole sweeteners, you can sub an equal amount of your favorite keto-friendly sweetener, such as my own blend Dietz Sweet or Lakanto. I would go with Lakanto Golden for more of that caramel-y flavor.
If you decide to eliminate the coconut sugar and go slightly lower carb with a keto-friendly sweetener, you’ll bring the carb count of each cookie down 5.6 grams. Scroll down to the bottom of the recipe for the complete nutrition facts.
How to Make Easy Pumpkin Spice Breakfast Cookies
How’s it sound to mix everything together, form into cookies, and bake? Easy enough for ya?
Because that’s pretty much it.
I didn’t even drag out my stand mixer for this. Just the old-fashioned hand mixer and a mixing bowl.
To form bigger breakfast cookies, I use a tablespoon-size dough scoop and place 2 scoops in my hand. Then, I shape into balls and flatten in my hands.
If I had a 2-tablespoon cookie dough scoop, I’d use that and only use 1 scoop. Either way, this makes for a larger, heartier cookie.
I baked these Easy Pumpkin Breakfast Cookies on my pizza stone — but did not preheat the stone in the oven. The baking stone isn’t necessary, however. If you don’t use a baking stone, simply line a baking sheet with parchment paper before laying the cookies out and baking them.
Once removed from the oven, let them cool on the baking stone (or baking sheet) for a few minutes before transferring the cookies to a wire rack to finish cooling.
When cool, the texture is soft, slightly chewy, and moist — almost cake-like on the inside.
Store cookies in an airtight container at room temperature for a couple of days. After that, they need to be refrigerated.
Easy Pumpkin Breakfast Cookies (paleo, gluten-free, vegan)
Add these Easy Pumpkin Breakfast Cookies to your breakfast rotation! They're paleo, vegan, and gluten-free, great for grab-and-go, and so filling!
Ingredients
- 1canpumpkin puree not pumpkin pie filling
- 1/2cupalmond butteror other nut or seed butter of choice
- 1/2cupcassava flour
- 1/2cupcoconut sugaror keto sweetener of choice
- 1/2cupfinely shredded unsweetened coconut
- 1/2cupsoaked and dehydrated pumpkin seeds(or 1/4 cup chopped pecans + 1/4 cup pumpkin seeds)
- 1/2 cupapple-juice sweetened dried cranberries
- 1/4cupcoconut flour
- 1/4cupgrass-fed collagen*not vegan, use 1/4 of a vegan protein powder for vegan
- 2teaspoonsground cinnamon
- 2teaspoonsground ginger
- 3/4teaspoonallspice
- 1/2teaspoon ground nutmeg
- 1/4teaspoonground cloves
- 1tablespoonbaking powder
Instructions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper, unless you prefer to use a baking stone. Do not preheat the baking stone, if using.
Combine all ingredients in a large mixing bowl or the bowl of your stand mixer and mix until combined.
Scoop 2 tablespoons of cookie dough into your hand and form into a ball. Then flatten until about 1/2" thick. Sprinkle a few more pumpkin seeds on top of each cookie for garnish, if you like.
Bake for 19 to 22 minutes.
Cool on the baking sheet for a few minutes before transferring to a wire rack to finish cooling.
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More Easy & Nourishing Breakfast Recipes You’ll Love…
- Best Cassava Flour Pumpkin Bread (nut-free, dairy-free, grain-free)
- Easy Paleo Orange Muffins (nut-free, dairy-free, coconut-free)
- Keto Matcha-Moringa Baked Donuts (dairy-free, nut-free, paleo)
- Instant Pot Quinoa Breakfast Porridge (dairy-free, nut-free, vegan)
- Kale & Cheddar Quiche
- Instant Turmeric Bone Broth Latte
- No-Fail Instant Pot Soft-Boiled Eggs
- Easy & Nourishing Soaked Apple Breakfast Cake (gluten-free, nut-free, dairy-free option)
- 5-Ingredient Vanilla Blueberry Kefir Overnight Oats + 60 Nourishing No-Cook Breakfast Recipes
- The Everything Smoothie
- No-Bake Chocolate Orange Quinoa Granola
- Soaked Gluten-Free Pumpkin Spice Breakfast Cake
How do you keep breakfast interesting? Do you ever add breakfast cookies to your rotation?
I’m going shopping, can’t wait to make the Pumpkin Breakfast Cookies
Awesome! Please check back in after you make them!