Nothing welcomes Fall like baking up a batch of Grandma Dorothy’s Soft Pumpkin Cookies for dessert! These amazing cookies are so easy to make and are topped with an incredible orange cream cheese frosting.

whole wheat soft pumpkin cookies with frosting on a cooling rack with pumpkins in the background

Grandma Dorothy is the real-life grandmother of my husband Troy. Known as “Grandma Sweetie” to almost everyone, she is allergic to pretty much all food. We joke she exists on a diet of air, cardboard, and beans. So naturally, she makes the best soft pumpkin cookies you’ve ever had in your life. She just can’t eat them herself.

Truth be told, I don’t give two craps about pumpkin anything. The whole onslaught of “pumpkin-spiced everything” makes me roll my eyes so hard that I may sprain them one of these days. But these cookies have changed my mind about snickering at the basicness of pumpkin. They taste of Fall, and of pumpkin mixed with cinnamon.

They taste a bit like redemption.

Ok, here is the weirdest and most awesome part about these pumpkin cookies…they are even better the next day. Freshly baked cookies are always an amazing treat, but they tend to get a bit more “meh” as time progresses.

These cookies though? They actually improve with a little time in the fridge and are more fabulous 24-48 hours after baking. It’s a freaking miracle people.