On September 25th, this "Dear Betty" request appeared on our Betty Crocker.com Community Board:
"I was wondering if anyone has a pumpkin dumplings recipe. I just had one at a local street fair served with cinnamon sauce and pumpkin ice cream. It was to die for!! I checked the internet for recipes but none of them were like what I had. These were actually the same shape of an apple dumpling but the dumpling part wasn't as thick. Please help if you can. Thanks!!"
I had never heard of sweet pumpkin dumplings, but I’m very familiar with Apple Dumplings made with pie crust and the type of dumplings served as Chicken and Dumplings. Realizing that I couldn’t wrap pie crust around a pumpkin (because that would be one jumbo dessert) I decided to start developing this recipe with the other type of dumplings.
I must tell you that developing this recipe was a work of love, or we wouldn’t have continued with it. After eight tests, we arrived at the recipe below. What took so long? Here are some of the challenges we encountered during the series of tests:
1. The milk in the sauce curdled so we changed it to cream, thinking that a higher-fat sauce wouldn’t curdle. This worked but the sauce was too opaque and a funny color.
2. We wanted more flavor in the sauce and so tried substituting brown sugar (to fix the sauce color) for granulated sugar. We still weren’t pleased with the sauce.
3. The first dumplings used only ¼ cup pumpkin in the dumplings and we wanted more pumpkin flavor. So we tested them with ½ cup pumpkin and then they got really heavy. But we found if we increased the sauce amount, the dumplings would raise more and that eliminated the heaviness.
4. When we wanted a clearer sauce, we tried using cinnamon sticks in the sauce but they didn’t impart enough flavor. And so, back to the ground cinnamon.
5. There seemed to be too much sauce in one of our trials but when we reduced it the dumplings didn’t rise as much and became heavy again.
6. Susan, our Test Kitchen Associate, suggested using apple juice in the sauce instead of the cream, and that worked well.
7. The apple juice was good but we could taste apples and so we diluted it with part water.
8. Lots of changes later, we came up with the recipe in the photo. The dumplings are light and fluffy and the sauce has a rich cinnamon flavor. The whipped cream cuts some of the sweetness and provides a nice temperature difference. Pumpkin ice cream would have worked too. But's that another recipe and more tests to go.
This may not be the version served at the fair but we thought it was a really nice fall dessert. Please let me know what you think.
Pumpkin Dumplings with Cinnamon Sauce
Dumplings
1 1/4 cups Gold Medal ®all-purpose flour
1/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup canned pumpkin (from a 15-oz can)
2 tablespoon vegetable oil
Sauce
1 1/2 cups apple juice
1 1/2 cups water
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
Sweetened, whipped cream (or pumpkin ice cream!)
In medium bowl, combine flour, sugar, cinnamon, baking powder, salt and nutmeg.
In large bowl, combine milk, pumpkin and oil. Stir in flour mixture just until soft dough forms. In 3- quart saucepan, combine sauce ingredients except the cream; bring to a boil over high heat, stirring frequently. Drop dough by 4 large spoonfuls into hot liquid. Reduce heat to simmer. Cover tightly; cook 15 minutes. Do not remove cover during cooking. Spoon dumplings into dessert dishes; spoon hot sauce over dumplings. Serve warm with whipped cream.
4 servings