The habanero powder was blisteringly hot. I wanted to make sure there was enough salt to counter the heat. I added it gradually, but ended up doubling the original amount.
I made half the recipe and it yielded about one and a half dozen cookies.
3/4 cup canned pumpkin
1/2 cup sour cream
3/4 cup light brown sugar
1 egg, beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 3/4 cup seedless raisins currants
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
1½ cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon allspice
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ginger
1/2 teaspoon habanero chile powder
1/2 1 teaspoon salt
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Combine the pumpkin, sour cream, sugar, egg, and vanilla and mix well. Stir in the raisins and the walnuts. Sift the dry ingredients together, then stir into the pumpkin mixture until just mixed. Drop by tablespoons onto a lightly greased cookie sheet. Bake for 15 minutes or until lightly browned.
I'm not a fan of raisins, so I used currants and reduced the quantity a little since they're smaller. To make the habanero powder, I thinly sliced the chiles, then baked them at 200 degrees. They promptly burned to a crisp (which I saved to use on savory dishes.) Others have used this technique, but probably didn't cut them into thin slices. The next batch I let dry out in a barely warm oven, about 100 degrees, until they were crisp. I tried to avoid using any seeds in the cookies; they didn't break up when I ground the chiles in a mortar and pestle.
Conclusion: These were very tasty. Nice spice level, and not too sweet. They had the perfect level of heat, medium spicy, but the texture was a little off. They were a little spongy rather than cakey, which would suggest too much liquid even though the dough wasn't particularly wet (for a drop dough.) They seemed like they needed something, so I added a hard sauce frosting. I'd like to convert this recipe to a muffin, with perhaps a cream cheese frosting.
Recipe: via Chile Pepper magazine, June 1993 (Fiesta Canning Co., Inc.)
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