Pumpkin Donuts with Browned Butter Maple Frosting

Recipe based on The Cafe Sucre Farine (LINK)

So I have a new obsession. After over six whole months, maybe even a year since I realised they existed, I decided to expand my baking collection with donut pans.

I have been fascinated about the concept of baked donuts since stumbling across a recipe for Strawberry Buttermilk Donuts on one of my rare Google+ tours.
I have tried my hand at a couple of donut recipes, however seeing as it was the week leading up to Canadian Thanksgiving, I decided to celebrate this serendipity into making Pumpkin donuts.

#nevertheartist

The recipe was quite fiddly, and used the microwave more than I like to (which is never), and to be honest, I am not so keen on the Pumpkin flavour, so I probably wouldn't attempt this recipe again.

Munch

I messed up the frosting by combining all the ingredients before it got fly-zapped, sorry, microwaved, rather than adding the fine sugar last. I'm not sure if this was the reason the frosting was quite grainy, but either way it wasn't my favourite texture.

Me: 2, Pumpkins: 0

Pumpkin Cookies

Based on the recipe on Yammie's Noshery (LINK to be added)

Now that it is Autumn, everyone around me seems to be going crazy for pumpkins. The notion of pumpkin being used in sweet foods is a novelty for me. It wasn't a vegetable - or squash - that I grew up with.

I mean I knew what a pumpkin looked like, I wasn't oblivious about Jack o' Lanterns, but I had no idea it was but one member of a large family.
I remember bursting into somewhat unreasonable laughter at the comical butternut squash that was being bought by a supermarket customer at the store I worked at. I really had no idea what it was!

Being me, I refused to have anything be alien to me, so I strove to make squashes my friend. Butternut squashes. Not so much pumpkins.

Now I work in an international company, and as a nice way to finish the first 'quarter', they celebrated Canadian Thanksgiving that coincided with the time. Pumpkins, pumpkins everywhere! Well, it certainly felt that way.

I decided to clamber on to the bandwagon in the misguided belief that I would suddenly appreciate and love pumpkin flavour.

I tried Pumpkin Donuts (please see next post!), and found that this recipe for pumpkin cookies would conveniently use up the rest of the puree I had from my open can.

From the oven

The recipe was straightforward, nothing to complain about, however this is the second time I have tried a cookie recipe from Yammie, and my quantities vary quite widely from hers. I guess my standard cookie size is a bit bigger than hers, and she does tend to vary from type to type, although the ingredient quantities/batter size stay more or less the same.

Taster

I know I keep making the mistake of trying warm cookies, but I did it again, and found that the taste was not for me. Not the same situation for my colleagues, who really appreciated them.

Different strokes for different folks, I guess!

Pumpkin Butter and Roasted Pumpkin Seeds

Pumpkin Butter using recipe from OhSheGlows (LINK)

I used two prize 'Zumpkins' grown by a colleague. I don't have a cleaver, so had to use a lot of energy with my 'Psycho' style chef's knife to cut it into manageable pieces.

Roasted them at 170°C for around 1h and 20 minutes.

I didn't sieve the water out of them however I did leave the flesh to sit in a bowl after I scooped it out, went out to buy a hand blender, and some of the water had naturally seeped out by the time I returned, so I discarded the fluid.

I used light brown muscovado sugar instead of Sucanat or brown sugar as suggested.

The result was delicious, and indeed did taste wonderful on toast.

Butter, butter, everywhere

The seeds were another matter! Removing them from the flesh was a tedious affair, and at several points, I nearly gave up, however I could not bring myself to waste them.

I followed the recipe for roasting them from OhSheGlows yet again, and they turned out wonderfully. I roasted them at 170°C for 19 minutes, tossing them after 10 minutes, and they came out lovely and crisp; well worth it.

Good Snackin'

Should any more pumpkins come my way, I will definitely put them to use in this way again.

Pumpkin Butter Cake

Recipe base from Baked Bree (LINK)

Substituted pecan nuts for pumpkin seeds to make the cake nut-free

Converted all cup measurements (with the exception of the pumpkin butter) to grams

2 cups of flour - 250g (used plain flour)
1/2 cup of butter - 113g (unsalted)
1 cup of sugar/1 cup of brown sugar (200g each)

I couldn't be bothered to grind my nutmeg so used 1/2 teaspoon of ground nutmeg from the jar.

I forgot to buy baking soda, so used 4 additional teaspoons of baking powder, and omitted the 1/2 teaspoon of salt. 

I used my own homemade 'Zumpkin' butter following the recipe from Oh She Glows (LINK).
I accidentally added 1 1/2 cups of pumpkin butter rather than 1 1/3, however it doesn't appear to have hurt the cake; I will update this once I have cut it tomorrow.

The batter seemed quite lumpy - mainly because I was impatient and didn't wait for my butter to become soft enough, so I couldn't cream my butter and sugar together properly. To be honest, I even if I had waited, I couldn't see how it would cream together due to the high sugar:butter ratio; I imagine it would have been more of a breadcrumb textured mixture.
The batter also seemed a lot more fluid than the picture on Bree's site, however this is probably down to the overage of pumpkin butter, plus the butter itself was a little bit fluid - I was too scared to boil it down further for fear of burning it!

I baked the cake for 50 minutes at 170°C, and it was a lovely burnished colour, however the cake tester was looking a little sweaty, so I covered the cake with foil, and returned to the oven for another 10 minutes. The cake looked done after this point, however just to rest my mind, I returned it to the oven with its foil hat with the heat off for another 10 minutes.

Total baking time: 1 hr 10 minutes.

I'm not sure why my icing wasn't as thick and white as Bree's... I'm not someone who really focuses on decoration, but one day, I will be bothered enough to find out!










As you can see the cake was a little bit moist on the inside. My oven is not fan-assisted, and most of the heat is around the edges due to the element within it, so this does not surprise me.
If anyone has any suggestions on how to alleviate this issue, please comment!