Pumpkin Dinner Rolls



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A warm, freshly baked dinner roll is one of the biggest highlights of the holiday table, be it Thanksgiving or Christmas. A few days ago, I was scrolling through Pinterest when I stumbled upon these Pumpkin Shaped Dinner Rolls. One look and I was so besotted I knew I had to make them. These little pumpkins look so pretty and adorable, who wouldn’t want to bake them?

This year, instead of settling for store-bought ones, take it up a notch and impress your guests with a basket of these delicious rolls.
These Pumpkin Dinner Rolls are soft, fluffy, buttery, perfectly sweet and deliciously satisfying. They are definitely going to be the highlight of your Thanksgiving Table!
The taste of pumpkin is very subtle in these rolls and hence can be served with almost anything. While they are great as breakfast slathered in butter or cream cheese, their pull-apart shape makes them perfect for dipping into soups and stews.
Here are some other recipes that you can add to your Thanksgiving meal: How to Shape these Rolls?

There are two different ways to shape the rolls. The first method is wrapping a long piece of kitchen twine around the balls of dough and then baked with the string attached forming little pumpkins. Though this process is a bit too time consuming with all the tying and un-tying, it gives very realistic looking pumpkin buns.
While I much prefer the string method for creating these cutie little pumpkins, you can also make these using kitchen scissors. Oil your scissors (or a sharp knife) and make 8 cuts equally spaced around the ball of dough, leaving the centre uncut. Either way you decide to shape them they are sure to look awesome!



If you make these Pumpkin Dinner Rolls, I would love to know how they turned out! Please let me know by leaving a comment below.



Ingredients:
  • 1/2 cup milk
  • 1/2 cup butternut squash puree
  • 3 Tbsp or 45g unsalted butter
  • 1 medium egg
  • 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1/4 cup (50 g) light brown sugar, you can add more sugar if you want to make sweeter
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1/4 cup lukewarm water
  • 6 gram or 2 tsp instant yeast
  • 1 egg, for egg wash
  • Sliced pecans
Instructions:
  1. In a large bowl, add the milk, melted butter, the pureed pumpkin, salt and brown sugar and mix well.
  2. In a small bowl, combine 1/4 cup lukewarm water and the yeast. Wait 5- minute for yeast to proof. When it gets foamy, add it to the pumpkin mixture.
  3. Add the eggs. Then, slowly stir in the flour and mix until the batter looks incorporated. Then , gently knead with your hands.
  4. If you are going to knead the dough by hand, in the first 5 minutes, the dough will be quite sticky. But it will get better as you keep kneading. You can add a little more flour if the dough seems too wet.
  5. Form the dough into a ball, place in a greased bowl (to prevent the dough from drying out) and cover with a damp cloth. Keep this bowl in a warm place for 1-2 hours to allow the dough to rise.
  6. Take the dough out of the bowl and knead for another 2 – 3 minutes until the dough is smooth. Divide the dough into 15 equal portions and shape them into balls.
  7. If you are using a kitchen twine method to shape the rolls. Tie the kitchen twine around the dough ball in a way that the ball is divided into 8 parts. Do not tie the ball too tightly as it will continue to rise a lot more during baking. Repeat the process for all the dough balls.
  8. To shape the buns using scissors, oil your scissors and make 8 cuts equally spaced around the ball of dough, leaving the centre uncut, then use the oiled end of a wooden spoon to make a deep hole in the centre of each bun.
  9. Prepare a baking tray that is lined with parchment paper and place all the shaped pumpkin balls on the tray and cover with a kitchen towel and set aside they get puffy for about 30 minutes.
  10. Preheat the oven to 175 degrees Celsius.
  11. Place all the shaped pumpkin balls on the prepared tray and brush them with egg wash, and bake for 15-20 minutes until golden brown.
  12. Remove the buns from the oven. Brush the hot rolls generously with melted butter immediately, this helps to create an even shinier surface.
  13. Let the buns cool down completely before cutting the twine(if you are using the twine method).
  14. Break a pecan in half and put it in the hole at the centre of the bun to make it look like stem.
  15. Serve immediately.

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