Pumpkin spice lovers will want to snack on these soft vegan pumpkin snickerdoodles all season long! 

It’s FALL! Time to pull out the cozy knit sweaters, plaid scarves, fuzzy blankets, jewel-toned clothing, my box of flavoured teas, and the canned pumpkin stash from the basement storage. The last being the most important because I’ve been dying to make all things pumpkin. Oatmeal, cookies, pasta, pizza, muffins, and everything else I could possibly put it in. I started with pumpkin snickerdoodles because they are absolutely perfect with a cup of tea.

I’m a summer girl at heart but the frenzy over fall is slowly growing on me. Pumpkin patches, apple orchards, Thanksgiving, corn mazes, and the return of my comfort-over-fashion outfits (i.e. leggings and a baggy sweater) is all very appealing. Since school is in full swing, I look forward to everything that is not related to school. Even going to get my hair trimmed was a highlight this past week.

These past two weeks have been an emotional roller coaster and incredibly busy. I attended my cousin’s beautiful wedding across the border and spent a lot of time with my extended family. We pretty much had a big family dinner every day and I got to play hide and seek, pretend to be fairies, and piggy back my nieces and nephew. They are the most adorable and well-behaved kids I’ve ever met and I love them to bits. Such a pity they live half a country away; I’d be willing to babysit them all the time and teach them to cook and take them to the playground if they lived in Vancouver. Those were the emotional highs.

Sandwiched in that time was my best friend’s grandma’s celebration of life (or funeral, to put it more bleakly). Her sudden passing shocked me to the core and I couldn’t even keep myself together for 5 minutes after the ceremony began. When my best friend shared her memories of her grandma’s Earthly life, I had to use 3 tissues to mop the tears off my face. We sobbed in each others arms at the final viewing and it was one of those moments that was brief, probably lasted less than 30 seconds, but has become so deeply engraved into my memory. I’m just glad I can be by my best friend’s side in times of celebration and in times of mourning.

Compared to the milestone events that took place these past few weeks, school was like an annoying fly buzzing around my head; it was there but eventually I stopped paying attention to it. I was present in the lecture hall but my mind was elsewhere thinking about what time I’ll need to get home by for the next family function, or what I should be baking on the weekend.

Jokingly I told Chew that the last week of September is pretty much irrelevant because my mind is already thinking about October. In October are many birthdays, the Mid-Autumn Festival (mooncakes!), Canadian Thanksgiving, and Halloween. What flavour cake to bake my friends, what dishes I should make for the family on Thanksgiving, what costume I’ll DIY this year, when to go to the pumpkin patch and apple orchards, and what pumpkin design I should carve are apparently more urgent matters in my head than midterm exams and assignments. This is probably why my appreciation for fall is growing; it distracts me from the glumness that is school.

Baking also takes my mind off of looming school deadlines. Bringing some cookies or muffins to share with friends and eat during lecture gives me something to anticipate. Little things can bring such joy!

These soft-baked vegan pumpkin snickerdoodles are a healthier version of the classic cinnamon sugar cookie. Thanks to oat fibre and low glycemic coconut sugar, you can enjoy an afternoon snack without the blood sugar spike. Welcome fall, or your Thanksgiving dinner guests, with a batch of delicious vegan pumpkin snickerdoodles!