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Sweet

Pampoenkoekies

Small pumpkin fritters, crisp outside and soft inside, with cinnamon sugar or caramel sauce. In South Africa they are pudding and side dish at once, depending on what goes on top.

Pampoenkoekies are leftovers cookery at its best: yesterday's boiled pumpkin, flour, an egg. They appear next to the Christmas roast and on the table as a summer pudding.

Prep
20 min
On the fire
15 min
Serves
6
Effort
medium
Pumpkin fritters for sale at a Cape Town eatery
Discott · CC0

When it goes on

Right at the end

Pudding in the last of the heat — or something that needs no fire at all.

Equipment: Cast-iron pan

This line

Trekboers and Voortrekkers1652 to about 1900

The three-legged pot, sausage as a way of keeping meat, bread without an oven.

Fresh at the Western Cape January · February · March · April · May · June · July · August · September · December

Method

  1. Prepare the pumpkin

    Mash the cooked pumpkin roughly and drain it well in a sieve. Purée it and you get a batter that runs apart in the pan.

  2. Mix the batter

    Combine flour, baking powder, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice and salt. Stir in pumpkin, egg and milk to a thick batter that drops reluctantly off a spoon. Do not beat it longer than necessary.

  3. Heat the oil

    In a cast-iron pan, heat oil about five centimetres deep to 175 °C. Without a thermometer: a drop of batter should rise and sizzle at once without going dark.

  4. Fry

    Slide small portions in with two spoons, no more than four at a time. Two to three minutes, turned once, until golden all round.

  5. Drain

    Drain on paper and roll straight in cinnamon sugar while hot and still slightly oily — that is what makes it stick.

  6. Caramel sauce, optional

    Boil sugar and water without stirring for five to ten minutes until amber. Off the heat, stir in cream and butter carefully — it spits — and whisk smooth.

Tips

  • At the fire it works in a cast-iron pan over strong coals. The oil comes up to temperature faster than you expect; keep a lid within reach.
  • The batter must not be thin. If it runs off the spoon like pancake batter, it wants flour — add a tablespoon.
  • Reheat leftovers in an oven, not a microwave, or they go leathery.

Pampoenkoekies are a hybrid, and that is what makes them interesting: in South Africa they sit next to the Christmas roast and appear as a summer pudding. What they are is decided by what goes on top — cinnamon sugar makes them dessert; without sugar they are a vegetable side.

Technically everything hangs on one thing: how wet the pumpkin is. Boiled pumpkin holds water, and a wet batter dissolves in hot oil instead of forming a crust. So drain it, and mash rather than purée.

The rest is frying routine: not too many at once, or the temperature drops and they soak up oil instead of shedding it.

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Braai pie

Total time
40 min
Serves
6
Heat of the coals
medium
Equipment
Hinged grid