Pumpkin donuts

Delicious donuts prepared in a less traditional way due to the addition of pumpkin puree. Full of cinnamon and spice flavour. These donuts must be on your table this autumn.

Pumpkin is a versatile vegetable because it works well in both savoury and sweet dishes. Personally, from pumpkin I usually make soups or sauces to go with pasta. A few times I’ve also made pumpkin muffins, pumpkin pie but now it’s time for something else and that something else is donuts.

These donuts are made from a yeast based dough, to which I also added a few extra ingredients. Apart from the pumpkin puree, I used spices and cinnamon. These spices wonderfully brought out and emphasized the pumpkin flavour.

I chose not to fill the donuts with anything such as jam or chocolate, I only sprinkled them with a mixture of sugar and cinnamon.

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Ingredients for pumpkin donuts.

• 150 g pumpkin puree (I used butternut squash)
• 350 g plain flour
• 40 g fresh yeast
• 1 tablespoon of crystal sugar
• 1 tablespoon of all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon of gingerbread spice
• a pinch of salt
• 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon
• 100 ml lukewarm milk
• 70 g margarine or unsalted butter
• 5 tablespoons of light brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 egg yolk
• sunflower oil for frying
• additionally: flour for dusting the dough

Sprinkling:

• 4 tablespoons of light brown sugar
• 1 tablespoon of caster sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon

How to make pumpkin donuts.

Dough: put the yeast with a spoonful of sugar to a cup. Stir until the yeast becomes liquid. Then add a tablespoon of flour, mix and set aside to rise for about 10 minutes.

Combine the pumpkin puree, egg and egg yolk, lukewarm milk and brown sugar in a bowl.

In a separate bowl mix flour, cinnamon, salt, and gingerbread spice.

Dissolve the margarine and let it cool down.

Add the risen yeast and all the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients, then mix them all thoroughly. Knead the dough for 3-4 minutes. Finally, add the liquid margarine. Continue kneading the dough until it begins to separate from your hand. Cover the bowl with a cloth and set it aside to rise in a warm place. The dough should double its volume.

Transfer the dough to a pastry board lightly sprinkled with flour and roll it out to a thickness of about 1.5 to 2 centimetres. Cut out circles from the rolled out dough with a glass. Place the donuts on a lightly floured board and let them rise in a warm place for around 30 to 40 minutes.

Pour oil into a pot and start warming it up. Once it’s hot, put in the donuts. Fry the donuts on a medium heat until golden brown on both sides. Place the fried donuts on a paper towel to drain the excess oil.

Sprinkling: mix the brown sugar with caster sugar and cinnamon. It’s best to use a grinder so that the ingredients combine well with each other.

Sprinkle each donut with cinnamon sugar.

Good to know when making pumpkin donuts.

I made the pumpkin puree by blending pieces of baked pumpkin. It is enough to cut the pumpkin into pieces (unpeeled!), place it in an oven preheated to 190 degrees Celsius and bake until soft. Once the pumpkin pieces are baked cool them down, remove the skin and blend.

I sprinkled only the top of each donut. If you bake very small donuts then you can coat them all in sugar.

Depending on how big donuts you want to make, use a glass with the appropriate diameter.

Do you like donuts? If so, try our recipe for Donuts filled with jam.