Pumpkin Donuts

By Pattywak

I’m REALLY appreciative of moist, tender cake doughnuts that are baked, not deep-fried. They’re as fast and easy to make as… well, let’s just call them a piece of cake.

Ingredients

• Place the following in a mixing bowl:
• Preheat oven to 350*
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 3 large eggs
• 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
• 1 1/2 cups pumpkin purée (canned pumpkin)
• 1 1/2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice, or 3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon plus a heaping 1/4 teaspoon each ground nutmeg and ground ginger
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

Details

Adapted from kingarthurflour.com

Preparation

Step 1

Put everything in mixing bowl.

Beat everything together until smooth.

Add 1 3/4 cups + 2 tablespoons (8 ounces) Unbleached All-Purpose Flour, stirring just until smooth.


Lightly grease two standard doughnut pans.

As I mentioned earlier, if you don’t have doughnut pans, you can bake these in a couple of standard muffin tins; they just won’t be doughnuts.

Fill the wells of the doughnut pans about 3/4 full, using a scant 1/4 cup of batter in each well; a tablespoon cookie scoop helps with this task.

If you’re making muffins, fill each well about 3/4 full; the recipe makes about 15, so you’ll need to bake in two batches (unless you have two muffin pans).

Bake the doughnuts for 15 to 18 minutes, or until a cake tester inserted into the center of one comes out clean. If you’re using self-rising flour, bake for the longer amount of time.

If you’re making muffins, they’ll need to bake for 23 to 25 minutes.

Remove the doughnuts from the oven, and after about 5 minutes, loosen their edges, and transfer them to a rack to cool.

While the doughnuts are still warm (but no longer fragile), gently shake them in a bag with cinnamon-sugar. Or better yet, pumpkin-spice sugar, made by combining the aforementioned pumpkin pie spice (or substitute) with granulated or extra-fine sugar.