Sweet Pumpkin Doughnuts

Posted August 29th, 2009 in Food No Comments »
This morning I woke up early and was wondering around the kitchen.  I like having coffee in the morning so I made a cup of black coffee, and opened the fridge if there’s anything to munch on.  I was kind of half asleep, and sipping hot coffee and walking around thinking whether I should turn on tv or just enjoy this quite moment … if someone sees me in the morning I must look weird, but that’s me :p
When I was looking inside of the fridge I found a small piece of pumpkin.  It’s just a leftover from roasted pumpkin I made the other night.  Then I thought ” hey maybe I make some doughnuts using the pumpkin.”
I used to make many kinds of doughnuts when I was back in Japan, such as sweet potato doughnuts, carrot doughnuts,  kinako (soy bean powder) coated doughnuts, doughnuts with vanilla ice cream and azuki an (chunky azuki paste), etc.  I love doughnuts with carrot, sweet potato or pumpkin as they are not too sweet and high in nutrition.  Good for kids 🙂
Here is the recipe :
<Pumpkin Doughnuts>
  • 100 g pumpkin
  • 150 g plain flour
  • 3/4 tsp baking powder
  • 50 g sugar
  • 1 egg yolk
  • vanilla essence
  1. Cut pumpkin and peel the skin off.  Steam or microwave until it’s soft.  Drain well, an  mash up until smooth.
  2. In a bowl, place mashed pumpkin, egg yolk, sugar and few drops of vanilla essence.  Mix with a wooden spoon or a spatula.
  3. Shift in flour and baking powder and mix well.  (* at this point add 1 tbs of water into the dough if the mixture is too tough.  If the dough is already soft, there is no need to add water.)
  4. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap, and rest for 20 mins in the fridge.
  5. Heat up oil to 160~170 ℃.  Using two table spoons, slowly drop half table spoon of dough into oil, one at a time, and deep-fry until it’s golden.
  6. Drain, and serve on a plate.  Dust with icing sugar.
As I mentioned earlier this doughnut is not too sweet, so if you want to add more sweetness you can either:
drop into a tray of cinnamon sugar while it’s hot.
or,
you can dip into melted chocolate,
or,
enjoy with some icing.  🙂
You can also make them in different shapes such as rings and sticks.
Ring : cut baking paper into appx 10cm square, and pipe out the mixture into ring shape onto the baking paper.  Slowly drop the paper (with the mixture on) into 160~170 ℃ oil, facing the doughnuts side down, and deep-fry.  The paper will come off itself.
Stick : Drop a tiny amount of oil on your hands, and shape the dough into a stick, then quickly drop into heated oil.  Be careful not to burn yourself!
Now, if you excuse me I need to go back to the kitchen and finish up my doughnut while it’s hot. 🙂


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