Previously by Lisa Yelsey.
Today I’m sharing recipes for two types of pumpkin donuts! Pumpkin spice flavor is warm and subtle, and I prefer it in breads, cookies, muffins, cake donuts — anything kind of warm and bread-y. Pumpkin is also only seasonal for a few months, so I try to take advantage of people’s willingness to eat anything pumpkin during the fall. I’ve been working with spice ratios and textures, and these recipes are what I’ve worked out so far.
(I recently watched almost all of The Great British Bake Off and was amazed and infuriated by the “American Pie” challenge in Season 3, where everyone talked about how much they hate American desserts, especially pumpkin pie. It was straight up the meanest anyone on that show has ever been. Sweet desserts, pumpkin spice, and simple flavors are great and when I somehow get on Great British Bake Off despite being an American, I’ll show them all.)
My usual photographer was busy with a move while I worked on these recipes, so my parents stepped in to help — which means that I deleted a lot more pictures of myself saying “Please focus” and pictures of my dog playing with a toy. Also I scrolled back in the camera and found a lot of pictures of various appliances around the house (?).
I’m offering two recipes today, one easy and one a little bit more complicated, so you can choose to either kill a whole afternoon baking or whip up a quick dessert/snack!
First, the easy pumpkin donut recipe.
These are really more like mini donut muffins; they are baked, which makes them a lot easier to make than fried donuts. They are shaped like muffins, but have the lightness/fluffiness/coating of a donut. I like them because they’re quick, delicious, keep for a few days, and are extremely satisfying to make. I also make these using a mini muffin pan, so you can easily eat, say, one to five at a time.
Since this is such a wet dough, it’s also preferable to mix by hand, using a wooden spoon, instead of using a stand or electric mixer.
Ingredients:
½ cup butter [1 stick], melted and cooled*
3 eggs
1 ½ cups sugar
1 ⅕ cups pumpkin puree
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 ¾ cups flour
1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
dash of salt
1.5 teaspoons cinnamon
¼ teaspoon nutmeg
¼ teaspoon ginger
⅛ teaspoon cloves
⅛ teaspoon allspice
* you can also use vegetable oil if you want these to be dairy free
Directions:
Leave your eggs out for a while to get to room temperature. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
Mix dry ingredients separately. The spice amounts here are suggestions based off what I prefer in a pumpkin-flavored dessert (CINNAMON) — if there’s a spice you want more prominently featured, or if you hate ginger or something, feel free to adjust! Be careful with adding cloves, though, unless you really love for things to taste like soap.
Mix wet ingredients (butter, pumpkin, and vanilla) with sugar (preferably by hand, using a wooden spoon) until you get most of the lumps out and have a generally smooth consistency. Add eggs! If you must use a stand mixer, add eggs while the mixer runs on slow. If mixing by hand, you can just mix for 30-60 seconds between each egg.
Add wet ingredients to dry. Mix until just consistent, slowly, stopping as soon as everything is incorporated.
Spray muffin tins with cooking spray or rub tins with oil or butter with a paper towel.
Using two spoons (one to scoop, one to scrape the batter out of the first), pour batter into mini muffin tins. Make sure each muffin has the same amount of batter, and fill each so it’s a little beneath the top of the muffin tins. Wipe off excess batter you spilled on the tins so it doesn’t burn to it! (It takes me a very long time to clean anything.)
Bake for 12-14 minutes, longer if using full-size muffin tin (15-20 minutes for those, but keep an eye on them). A toothpick should come out clean, and you can lift one out of the tin a little bit to see if it’s browned. The top should also be crisped.
While these bake, make your glazes! Both are super easy. For the apple cider glaze, just mix the powdered sugar and apple cider. For the cinnamon/sugar glaze, melt butter and have it next to your bowl of cinnamon sugar.
Take muffins out of the oven and leave to cool for a few minutes before overturning onto a cooling rack or some paper towels. If you oiled/greased the pans, they should come out no problem. Glaze your donut muffins. For the cinnamon/sugar coating, dip or roll in the melted butter (depending on how much of it you want coated) and then toss in the cinnamon sugar. For the apple cider glaze, either dip in the glaze or use a spoon to drizzle over. As I glazed these, my dad took pictures while my mom read to us from the Haim Wikipedia page, totally unprompted.
These will keep for a few days at room temperature in a Ziploc or covered in tin foil. I got great responses from coworkers, even though I offered them up by saying “I need to get rid of these!”
Now for the more difficult recipe!
[Adapted from Smitten Kitchen]
Real donuts! Well, real cake donuts. These aren’t quite as tricky as yeast donuts, which can be extremely temperamental and therefore represent a mountain I have not yet conquered. But these fried cake donuts still take more effort and planning than the donut muffins, so budget a whole afternoon to make these. They’re warm, a little crispy, and flavored really nicely. It’s difficult to watch TV while you fry donuts, so I recommend picking a podcast or album you want to listen to — perhaps the Hamilton cast recording, the Hamilton cypher at the BET Hip-Hop Awards, any podcast or playlist featuring Hamilton, etc.
Ingredients:
3 ½ cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 ½ teaspoons cinnamon
¼ teaspoon nutmeg
¼ teaspoon ginger
⅛ teaspoon cloves
⅛ teaspoon allspice
dash of salt
½ cup pumpkin puree
4 tbspn butter
1 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla
2 eggs
½ cup buttermillk
vegetable oil to fry
Coating:
1 cup granulated sugar
3 teaspoons cinnamon
Glaze:
1 cup powdered sugar
2-4 tbspn maple syrup
Directions:
Leave out your eggs and butter to get them to room temperature.
Mix dry ingredients. Same rules apply to spices! Tip: Mixing dry ingredients ahead of time means that you don’t have to worry about any lag time with the reactions in your wet ingredients.
Cream butter and sugar! If using a stand mixer, beat on medium for several minutes. If mixing by hand, beat butter and sugar as long as your arm can stand it (probably a few minutes longer). Then mix in eggs one and a time, making sure each egg is fully incorporated. Measure out buttermilk and pumpkin mixture, mix together. Very slowly pour into the bowl, mixing continuously.
Fold in dry ingredients until just incorporated. Overmixing can make things tough and dry! I know there are scientific reasons for this but I forget all of them and my brain can only hold so much info. I’m already barely holding onto all the lyrics to “Satisfied.”
Cover baking sheet with parchment paper and flour. Pour out dough onto baking sheet. Sprinkle a little bit more flour on top. Push on dough until it’s evenly distributed across sheet. You can do this directly with your hands or between two layers of wax paper. Put in the freezer for about a half hour. (As you make your doughnuts, the dough may warm up and be difficult to work with — you can keep putting them back into the freezer, briefly, if needed.)
Make your glaze or coating! For coating: mix cinnamon and sugar in a wide bowl. For glaze, mix maple syrup and powdered sugar in a wide bowl. Put bowls near where you will be placing your fried donuts.
Heat oil. This is very easy in a deep fryer, more difficult to deal with in a pan. You want your oil at 350 degrees. If you’re using a deep fryer, just set the temperature. The first time I made donuts it was on Father’s Day so my dad could finally use the deep fryer he got on sale at Costco. If using a pan, just be sure to use a deep one, and put in several inches of oil. Heat on medium — but you can adjust heat up or down slightly if the oil doesn’t seem to be heating or is heating too fast. I clipped a candy thermometer to the side of the pan. (If you’re using a pan, the temperature regulation is going to be THE WORST. You just have to keep lowering and raising the temperature to keep it around 350. Take a break between batches if you need to.)
Cut out your donuts. To make round donuts I used two different sizes of cookie cutter. Sometimes I like to just use a tiny circle and make only donut holes.
Using tongs, put donuts in the oil. Fry for roughly 75 seconds (45 seconds on the first side, 30 on the second), until golden but not too brown. It’s fine if you want to fry these for longer, but they will have an extremely crispy outside, which isn’t everyone’s bag. Use tongs to flip the donuts and take them out.
Toss in cinnamon sugar or maple glaze. Put on a plate layered with paper towels.
These absolutely do not keep at all, so only make them when you’re expecting guests or are planning on eating 30 donuts in one day (in which case I support you fully!!). I personally made these and ate about 10 of them; we are all just trying to live our lives.
I hope you make and enjoy at least one of these recipes! Let me know if you have any questions before or after. I promise these are both doable and totally worth it!
Is the measurement for pumpkin really 1/5 cup or is that a typo?
Oh typo! I believe that should be 1 1/2 cups, thank you!
Mmmmmm donuts…
Is there some way to just download these donuts or 3D print them instead of having to gather the ingredients and actually bake them? Asking for a friend.
Anyone who likes baked desserts but thinks American ones are bad is objectively wrong and embarrassing themselves. Maybe they’ve been using American recipes without converting from American to British fluid ounces or something.
The British are all over there making suet puddings and spotted dick; I don’t care to know what they think of my pumpkin pie. (Full disclosure: my British grandmother made wonderful cookies. Though I don’t remember her ever making any cake or pie or anything…)
Nothing will get my parents on a rant more than this episode of GBBO. My mom insists they are making pie crusts wrong (because British savory pies =/= American sweet pies) and says she will glad go over there and school them on correct pie crust.
Also I guess someone in that competition said their American friend said we love peanut butter in everything and made a peanut butter pie?? What? (I haven’t seen this particular episode).
It was a peanut butter chocolate SQUASH pie. And the judges hated it. OF COURSE IT WAS DISGUSTING! Because squash ≠ pumpkin
Eh, squash would probably be close enough to pumpkin with enough sugar and the right spices. My family often has carrot pie on thanksgiving, which is just pumpkin pie with carrots instead of pumpkin and the sugar reduced, and it tastes pretty close to pumpkin. So I’m pretty sure replacing pumpkin is not that hard.
I’m not sure peanut butter chocolate pumpkin pie would be any good either, though.
Apparently, lots of canned “pumpkin” is actually squash anyway. (source: http://www.thekitchn.com/whats-actually-in-your-c…
Frankly many of the other orange squashed (pumpkin is but a variety of squash) are in fact more delicious.
But do leave the chocolate and peanut butter for a separate pie.
yeah, squash pie is a staple in my family! I think we spice it a little subtler than pumpkin but it is very very similar and delicious.
I think pb-choc-squash/pumpkin is just too many things going on, tbh.
In mine as well! My grandmother would make both squash and pumpkin.
Replacement really isn’t that hard, I was just indignant on behalf of pumpkins. Plus squash pie just doesn’t sound right to me¯\_(ツ)_/¯
And carrot pie? That sounds interesting, carrots are pretty sweet so I could imagine this tastes good!
It kind of depends on what kind of squash. Butternut, yes; zucchini, not so much….
Zucchini bread on the other hand is DELICIOUS
Zucchini bread may also be the sole means embattled gardeners have of keeping zucchini from TAKING OVER THE WORLD in the late summer. Though I’m also extremely fond of a Turkish zucchini pie (essentially a crustless quiche–shredded zucchini, grated mozzarella, crumbled feta, lots of minced fresh herbs like dill and flat-leaf parsley, and flour and eggs to bind it all together). It’s fabulous, but I would not serve it as a finale for Thanksgiving dinner.
I mean, also if you did a bit of cocoa powder in a well done pumpkin pie mix … that would be quite tasty. I’m totally willing to blame that failure entirely on execution.
American pie = British tarts.
Also Americans are crazy about peanut butter. And peanut butter pie is awesome. But peanut butter chocolate pumpkin pie does sound like an abomination, frankly…
But do tarts have a top pie crust? That is important for many (though not all) American pies.
Peanut butter just sounds like it’d be too dry as a filling to me.
No, tarts would only have a bottom crust. But so do American custard (pumpkin, lemon meringue, key lime, etc.) and cream (peanut butter, chocolate silk, banana creme, etc.) pies.
I agree, peanut butter by itself would be probably not so delicious, but mixed with whipped cream, cream cheese, cool whip, and / or other fluffening agents, it is a delightful dessert. Often topped with chocolate. Now I’m hungry for pie!
Me too!
I may also be biased, as while I like peanut butter (like a PB&J) I do not really like peanut butter based dessert (not even PB cookies).
I actually made my parents watch that episode because I couldn’t believe what I was watching so they could be furious too1 That part of the episode is shocking start to finish.
Yeah and if anyone says anything about American desserts being sweeter, they have to eat a whole Bakewell tart and then say it again to my face. Not to even mention sticky toffee pudding. I mean come on, let’s be fair.
Or a whole bag of cinder toffee. Or half a bag of cinder toffee, as long as I can have the other half.
mmmm, sticky toffee pudding. or perhaps a small slice of treacle tart.
I’ve gone crazy with the cloves by mistake before, and my tongue winds up going numb.
I’ve done the same with nutmeg. I love nutmeg. No such thing as too much nutmeg, right? Hmm, all I can taste is nutmeg.
Except that “too much nutmeg” is “enough nutmeg that it can be clearly distinguished from the other ingredients.” Nutmeg should be almost undetectable.
Our British friends are so wrong about American desserts
I had Italian houseguests and they had nothing but praise for all American sweets.
These look wonderful
GBBO running their mouths like they’re not about to slather a fruitcake in icing to look like a tennis court.
Word.
HA my thoughts exactly. When they stop putting jello in the same dessert as cookies and custard we can talk.
These look delicious… I might have to stop at a Time Horton’s on the way home now
WTF GBBO? While living in London my mother made pumpkin pies for Thanksgiving to bring to her office, and after initial skepticism (er, scepticism) her office mates DEVOURED it and asked for it regardless of time of year. ETA my mom couldn’t get canned pumpkin there and so would make me and any family members bring cans when we traveled there
Regretably for your baggage allowance, we can get canned pumpkin these days in grocery stores that do US imports, starting in September. The prices used to be extortionate (in 2009, I paid something stupid like £3.99 for a can) but I got my can of Libbys this year at Tesco for £2. The problem is finding a pre-made pie crust that’s big enough, as tart cases are TINY and I don’t own a pie dish on this side of the Atlantic.
I’ve not inflicted pumpkin on my colleagues yet, but they do love snickerdoodles like none other. There is a slow but steady conversion to pumpkin happening among Teh Youth here, thanks(?) to Starbucks introducing the PSL here a couple years back. I’m guessing this hasn’t reached the GBBO contestant demographic. Grr.
That is very handy to know, now I can experiment with these without massacring a pumpkin.
I make pumpkin bread a lot and my Dutch/various countries friends and colleagues seem to like it. They’re a little confused at first, because pumpkin is a normal vegetable here, usually as the basis for soups, or if you’re being fancy, some kind of curry-ish thing (like a vegetarian main dish). I haven’t bothered trying to track down canned, the little food pumpkins they sell here, mashed up, is good enough for bread. I might actually try one of these recipes with them for a change…
I made these donuts today and I was not impressed. I didn’t have any pumpkin so I substituted Nutella. I mixed the batter in my blender because it’s super fast–everyone should know this trick! I didn’t have mini muffin pans so I cooked them in a springform pan. I replaced the sugar with an equal amount of Splenda. I made a glaze out of sugar-free strawberry jam. It just came out like a sort of flat cake and was too sweet. Next time I might add baking soda, and I think the amount of sweetener called for was wrong.
Bless this perfect FoodNetwork.com comment-section comment.
A thousand, thousand times yes.
I just learned of GBBO, and I *love* it, everything from the zany blazer-wearing lady co-hosts to Paul Hollywood’s sociopathic piercing gaze. Do you live in America, and if so, how did you see all the seasons– I only know of the one airing on PBS and the one on Netflix. I am really eager to rage-watch this one and be crabby about their dismissal of American dessert! (Though seriously, my main takeaway from the show so far is that England is way more expansive in its dessert options than we are! All the different types of sponge!)
Same stupidity reigns here in Australia. They are NOT about the glory of sweet sweet pumpkin desserts. They make pumpkin scones which are like baking powder biscuits, or they bake pumpkin like a vegetable. To feed my addiction I must buy a butternut squash, bake it, then start from there. Plus they dont’ know the glory of pumpkin pie spice and I must use something called “mixed spice” which is delightful but not the same. My children clamor for a pumpkin pie for Christmas and then never eat any…which leaves an entire pie for me. It’s actually a win-win all around.
What does apple cider mean in the UK – is it apple juice? I’m presuming it’s not white lightning ‘alcoholic drink in parks as a 13 year old before they invented alcopops’ stuff?
It’s almost always alcoholic–it can be anywhere from that white lightning (a sketchy brand called ‘Crazy Jack’s’ advertised at my university when I was in grad school) to industrialised brands like Strongbow to artisanal small-batch organic varieties.
The closest thing to North American soft apple cider, imo, is probably ‘cloudy apple’ juice.
It’s similar to apple juice – usually (not always; it can be a labeling distinction only), apple juice is more processed / shelf stable / clearer. The apple juice you get (well, the apple juice my MIL in Dublin gets) is basically more like what Americans think of as apple cider already. Do you ever have those juice-box versions of apple juice, or apple Ribena? That’s our normal apple juice.
(We call your cider ‘hard cider’ and do not disparage it. Do you know how often a not-beer-liking person married to an Irish person goes to a pub when she’s visiting her in-laws? Even I can’t drink whiskey all the time.)
Excellent, thankyou – so if I were to use posh ‘not fron concentrate’ apple juice rather than the cheaper longer shelf-life one that should work?
Yes, exactly!
Melanie
Sometimes soft cider is spiced also – at least in Canada, the difference between cider and juice is that cider is served hot, has some apple pulp and usually has cinnamon, maple syrup and cloves added. You can also add dark rum or whiskey for a hot cocktail. Cold cider is mainly the alcoholic type like Strongbow or Madjacks, or else is hot cider that’s been allowed to cool and is served in fancy glasses for way too much money
Have just realised the first comment I left totally was without reading comprehension (e.g. read as ‘I am not in the UK and want to know what cider is like there’, augh)!
I’d use cloudy apple juice, though the regular stuff would work too.
Sometimes soft cider is spiced also – at least in Canada, the difference between cider and juice is that cider is served hot, has some apple pulp and usually has cinnamon, maple syrup and cloves added. You can also add dark rum or whiskey for a hot cocktail. Cold cider is mainly the alcoholic type like Strongbow or Madjacks, or else is hot cider that's been allowed to cool and is served in fancy glasses for way too much money
Hoorayyy for more Lisa baking posts (and pictures of Cassie)!!
Bless this perfect FoodNetwork.com comment-section comment.
These look so good!!! I miss your baked goods. I’ll definitely try these ones. 🙂