Pumpkin is again in season. I love vegetable/fruit (botanically speaking it is a fruit actually!).
Over the year I made plenty of recipes with pumpkin, both sour and sweets (risotto, pies, cakes, etc..).
However, I never baked bread with it, thus this time I tried this recipe that has been on my mind for a while.
They are sweet fluffy buns made with pumpkin pulp and flavored with cinnamon. With some kitchen twine and cinnamon sticks, you can shape them as little cute pumpkins.
In order to give them a nice yellow color, you can use either saffron or turmeric depending on your personal taste.
They really look cute but they are also so delicious!
Ingredients
For the dough
For the topping
For decorating
Steps
– slice the pumpkin and wrap it in foil paper, then bake it in static oven at 180 degrees for about 15/20 minutes;
– remove the pumpkin from the oven, allow it to cool down then peel it and weight 300g pulp you will need for the dough;
– transfer the 300g pulp into a bowl and blend it together with the egg, the honey, the saffron, the oil and the salt;
– sift the flour onto a large bowl, add the sugar, the yeast (crush it with your hands) and the milk;
– mix everything together till you start to get a dough;
– pout the pumpkin mixture and knead well till you get a smooth dough;
– transfer the though into a bowl greased with oil, cover with cling film and put it in the switched off oven for about 2 hours or till it doubles its volume;
– take the leavened dough and obtain small balls of about 150g/200g each;
– shape them into small balls and wrap them with the kitchen twine to give them the shape of little pumpkin;
– put the little pumpkin on a baking tray folded with baking paper (you will need 2 baking trays as you must put only 5 buns on each tray in order to leave enough space between them);
– cover the trays with kitchen towels and allow them to rest for another 20 minutes away from air drafts;
– whisk together the milk and the egg in a small bowl, then brush the buns with it;
– sprinkle some ground cinnamon onto them;
– bake in pre-heated static oven at 180 degree for 20 minutes or till golden (bake 1 tray at a time);
– once baked, allow them to cool down onto
– remove the kitchen twine, then still a little cinnamon stick in the middle of each pumpkin
Varied doses for servings