This is just a fabulous recipe in between Halloween and Christmas time. Pumpkin churros have everything; a nice pumpkin touch and all the magnificent spices from cinnamon, cloves to nutmeg, which reminds you of Christmas holidays.
But what are churros? They are around 15 cm long fried dough sticks, usually coated in sugar. They are irresistible delicious when hot! However, my boyfriend wanted churros. But I was a step ahead and I found these pumpkin churros. Moreover, I decided to bake them instead of deep-frying them.
Therefore, you can eat a couple of pumpkin churros more and don’t feel guilty about the greasy calories. Hmm, another thing, I suggest making and eating them on the same day. These pumpkin churros taste the best when directly out of the oven. And you will also need a star tip and piping bag to give them that classic look. I have a smaller one (Wilton open 1M). Consequently, the churros are thinner but still delicious. For thicker churros use a bigger star tip (this also means you will get a smaller amount of them).
Most of the times, churros are sprinkled with sugar, but I coated them in sugar and cinnamon. Another delicious addition to it is the dip. You can choose between dulce de leche, dark or white chocolate or vanilla sauce. I picked a dark hazelnut dip.
Ingredients for about 60 pumpkin churros:
- 256g flour
- 3 tsp cinnamon
- 1 tsp cloves (powder or ground)
- 1 tsp nutmeg (ground)
- 2 pinches of salt
- 1 Tbsp sugar
- 330 ml water
- 170 g pumpkin pureé
- 112 g butter
- 2 tsp vanilla aroma
- 1 tsp grated ginger (fresh)
- 4 eggs (room temperature)
- 1 Tbsp butter (melted, for coating)
- sugar and cinnamon for coating
First thing, make the pumpkin pureé. Wash, cut and clean the pumpkin (I used Hokkaido pumpkin). Cut the pumpkin in smaller pieces in order to cook quicker. Put to cook until tender. Then drain and pureé with an immersion blender.
Second, in a bowl, mix all the dry ingredients; flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, sugar and salt. Third, in a larger saucepan, combine butter, water, pumpkin pureé, ginger and vanilla aroma. Bring to boil, whisk and remove from the heat.
Once everything is combined, add one egg and mix until all the egg is evenly incorporated in the dough. Do the same with the remaining three eggs. Remember to add one at a time.
Then stir the flour mixture into the pumpkin batter, using a wooden spoon. Keep stirring until well combined and no flour is visible anymore. You will need quite some strength mixing the dough. But hey, free fitness. Hehehe.
Preheat the oven to 200º C. Cover a baking dish with some parchment paper, fill the piping bag (with a star tip inserted) with the churro dough and pipe the churros onto the paper. Try to make them 15 cm long. They won’t rise, so you can pipe them quite close to each other. I left around 2 cm of space in between.
Put to bake for 15 minutes. In case you are using the bigger tip, bake them for 20 minutes or until golden brown. Next, melt the butter. When the churros are baked, brush them one by one with the melted butter and coat them with the sugar and cinnamon mixture. Continue making the pumpkin churros until all the dough is gone.
Serve them while still warm. I used also some hazelnut-chocolate dip for that extra sweetness. Superb! You can’t top these amazing pumpkin churros. Hot, sweet, covered with cinnamon and dipped in chocolate. Yummy!
Enjoy!
