Recipes / Dessert
Pampoenkoekies (pumpkin fritters, heritage recipe)
Soft pumpkin fritters fried in a pan over the coals and rolled in cinnamon sugar, adapted from an 1891 Cape cookbook.
- Prep
- 20 min
- On the fire
- 20 min
- Serves
- 4 to 6 (about 20 fritters)
Ingredients
Fritters
To serve
Method
Cooking on gas?
- Set the frying pan over a burner on medium, or on your grill's side burner, and keep the grill lid open.
- Gas heats oil quickly, so test with a drop of batter as in the recipe and turn the flame down if the fritters brown too fast.
On a skottel?
- Heat the oil in the centre of the skottel on a medium flame. The pan is shallow, so fry 4 or 5 at a time and top up the oil between batches.
- Keep finished koekies warm on the rim, then roll them in cinnamon sugar just before serving.
- Soak the bread in the milk for 2 minutes, then squeeze it dry and crumble it into a bowl.
- Add the pumpkin and eggs and mash until smooth.
- Sift in the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, salt and cinnamon. Stir to a thick batter that drops slowly off a spoon.
- Set a heavy frying pan on the grid over medium coals and heat 1 cm (1/2 inch) of oil until a drop of batter sizzles at once.
- Drop in heaped tablespoons of batter, a few at a time, and fry for 2 to 3 minutes a side until puffed and golden.
- Drain on paper towel and roll in the cinnamon sugar while warm.
Done when: the fritters are golden on both sides and the middle of one, broken open, is set and no longer wet.
Tips
- Drain the cooked pumpkin well in a sieve. Watery pumpkin makes flat, greasy fritters.
- If the outside browns before the middle sets, the oil is too hot. Move the pan to the edge of the coals.
- Leftover pumpkin from a braai works well. Cook extra pumpkin the day before.
Pampoenkoekies are one of the oldest sweet treats on South African tables, served as a side with meat or as a pudding with cinnamon sugar. Hildagonda Duckitt’s 1891 recipe uses stewed pumpkin, milk-soaked bread and a little soda, fried in hot fat. This version adds baking powder for a lighter fritter and cooks them in a pan on the braai while the coals die down. Follow them with banana boats for a full fire-side pudding course.
Source
Adapted from Hilda's "Where is it?" of Recipes by Hildagonda J. Duckitt (1891), public domain.