The Kid and I are on vacation this week and we’ve started off with a bang! Or a splash, that is. This summer a huge aquarium opened near us called Sea Life. It’s dedicated towards educating people about sea life (duh) and conservation. We finally got around to going yesterday and it was great! We even got our very own behind the scenes tour for just the two of us.
Since we’ve got extra free time this week, I’m also doing a lot of cooking and baking. I found a recipe for pumpkin spice donut holes and modified it to make them lower in fat. Making these reminds me of Saturday mornings with my grandmother as a kid. We used to make donuts and holes from scratch after I spent Friday nights with her.
She had one of those real fryers with a special thermometer. She even had a donut cutter so you could roll out the donuts and cut them in official donut and hole shapes! After frying the donuts, I would put cinnamon and sugar in a brown paper bag and shake like crazy to coat them. They were so yummy!
Since these aren’t real donut holes, I’m calling them faux-nut holes but they are pretty close to the real thing. They turned out so moist. Make sure to eat them while they’re warm if you can!
Pumpkin Spice Faux-Nut Holes
- 1 3/4 cups flour
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 3/4 tsp cinnamon
- 1/2 tsp allspice
- 1/4 tsp nutmeg
- 1/4 tsp mace
- 1/8 teaspoons ground cloves
- 1/4 cup vegetable oil
- 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
- 1 egg
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 3/4 cup canned pumpkin
- 1/2 cup milk or soy milk or almond milk
- Powdered sugar (appx 1/2 cup)
Preheat oven to 350 degrees and spray a mini muffin pan with non-stick spray. My muffin pan makes 24 muffins and I think they are all standard sized. Mix all the ingredients together. I don’t bother with sifting or mixing dry and wet separately and then blending. You can if you want, but I’ve never had a problem not doing it. 😉
Fill each muffin opening equally with about 2 – 2 1/2 Tbsp of batter. They will be about 3/4 full. Bake at 350 degrees for about 12 minutes. They will puff up and be rounded on top like donut holes. Take them out and let them cool just a little bit. Add some powdered sugar to a ziploc baggie and toss in a few faux-nut holes in at a time. Shake to coat with sugar. Repeat with all holes until done!
These were awesome tasting. Don’t worry if you don’t have mace on hand. You can just use nutmeg in its place. I used mace because it’s the “standard donut spice” according to the bottle. Good enough reason for me to use it – I’ve got donut standards. I also used soy milk instead of real milk.
Get creative with your faux-nut holes. Use applesauce instead of the pumpkin and maybe some different spices. Toss them in cinnamon sugar or even sugar mixed with a bit of baking cocoa. Add mini chocolate chips to the batter! My mind is going crazy now with ideas.
Do you like donuts or the holes better? What flavor faux-nut holes will you try?
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