Festive Fritters

Pumpkin pie is a tradition for many of us on Thanksgiving, but I absolutely, positively, cannot stand pumpkin pie. The gooey texture, to me, is just repulsive, even though I enjoy the taste of pumpkin. What to do, then? Can my beloved donuts be served as dessert on Thanksgiving? There’s no law against it, so I made the bold decision to turn the traditional pumpkin pie into . . . pumpkin pie fritters. Pecan pie is another popular dessert this time of the year, so I used half the batch of dough to experiment with pecan pie fritters.

Rolled out and ready to rumble!

There are several ways to make fritters: some recipes use a cake dough, while others use a lighter yeast-based dough. I went with the yeast dough, even though prepping said dough takes more than twice as long as prepping a cake dough, as one needs to allow the dough to rise not once, but twice, in a proofing oven. Not to mention that making yeast dough creates twice the mess in one’s kitchen . . . but the time and mess can be worth it if the dough comes out right. In my case, it came out from the proofing oven wonderfully, soft and light and full of potential.

These babies were begging me to let them dive into the fryer.

The pumpkin and pecan goo, which one normally just dumps into a pie shell, was precooked to remove moisture—anyone who has made pumpkin or pecan pie will be familiar with the runny consistency of the pie fillings, which solidify only during baking. After precooking the fillings over the stovetop for ten minutes at medium heat (and draining the syrup off the pecan pie filling), they were ready to be incorporated into the dough. For fritters, taste trumps appearance, so there was no need to cut picture-perfect rounds using donut cutters. The filling is simply spread over half the dough, which is then folded over the filling and cut into dozens of tiny pieces. After cutting, the dough is then rolled into a log and sliced into rounds. Cut, slice, repeat, and it’s ready to fry when you have a big lump that resembles . . . a lump. That’s the only way to describe it.

Fry 90 seconds per side, drain, and then drizzle with icing while still warm, and—abracadabra!—the fritters are done. These things looked awesome waiting on the rack, but I was able to control myself and wait until after the feast later that day to take my first bite.

Finished and ready for the feast.

I have to admit, these things came out spot-on, especially the pecan pie fritters with maple icing. Even four days later, after the fritters had been sitting in my freezer untouched, a co-worker sampled one of the pumpkin fritters and described it as mind-blowingly delicious. Okay, maybe she didn’t say “mind-blowingly,” but I could read it in her eyes when she said “delicious.”

Want the recipe? Drop me a line and I’ll be happy to share it with you—it’s just a tad too long to post here, but the effort was well worth the results. I’m adding this one to my work-in-progress, The D-Man’s Donut Abstract, which is set to be released, oh, sometime around when I reach retirement age. By then, it should be a fairly thorough volume, unless donuts fall out of fashion before that day arrives. Let’s make sure that doesn’t happen, okay?