I have never made doughnuts other than an ad-hoc attempt one year at making chrusciki, which are not doughnuts per se but are a fried dough of sorts.Frying is a pain, and traditional doughnuts don’t really seem like the kind of thing I want to bother with (or transport to the office, which is the final destination for most of my baked stuff).

I found a pumpkin baked doughnut recipe recently and wanted to try it for Halloween. I went to considerable effort when I was recently in the US to get a few doughnut pans. And then I did not in the end get around to making the doughnuts. But the time is coming.

Pumpkin doughnut recipe

Doughnuts

1/2 cup vegetable oil

3 large eggs

1 1/2 cups sugar

1 1/2 cups pumpkin puree

3/4 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon ginger

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1 3/4 cups + 2 tablespoons flour

Preheat oven to 350F/175C.

Beat all ingredients except flour until smooth. Add the flour to the mixture, stirring just until smooth.

Lightly grease two doughnut pans. Fill the pan sections about 3/4 full.

Bake the doughnuts for 15-18 minutes or until a toothpick placed in the center of the doughnuts comes out clean.

Remove from the oven, let sit for five minutes and loosen the edges of the doughnuts and transfer to a rack to cool.

Cinnamon-sugar doughnut coating

3/4 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon ginger

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

some sugar

Mix all together in a plastic Ziploc bag (for example). When doughnuts are warm but not fragile, place them into the bag of spice mix and gently shake to coat the doughnuts.