Spiced Pumpkin and Bourbon Beignets Recipe

How to make it

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• Combine the pumpkin, Bourbon, spices, brown sugar, salt, water, and butter in a medium saucepot.
• Cover, and sit over medium high heat until the butter is just melted and the mixture is bubbling.
• Take the pan off the heat, and dump in all the flour at once. Using a wooden spoon, stir forcefully and rapidly until all the flour is absorbed.
• Place the pan back on the heat over medium-low heat for 30-45 seconds, until the dough comes away from the sides of the pan. Decant the hot dough into a large bowl.
• Stir the dough around to cool it off, and then add the eggs one at a time. Add one egg, and use the wooden spoon to stir it in. You could also use an electric hand mixer. Once the egg is absorbed, add the next, and then repeat for the third egg.
• The final pumpkin spice choux pastry should be smooth, thick, and sticky.
• Heat a deep pan half full of vegetable oil until it registers between 310 and 325 degrees on a candy thermometer.
• Drop in teaspoon-sized amounts of dough in batches, careful not to overcrowd the pan and effectively drop the temperature of the oil. Fry the beignets for 6 to 9 minutes.
• The trick is to allow them to fry until they crack. The fissure will expand. That is what creates the puff inside the beignet. When the fissure and the rest of the beignet are about the same color, six to nine minutes should have passed, and you’ll know the inside is cooked. Remove with a spider or slotted spoon to drain on paper towels.
• Toss with the vanilla sugar (recipe follows).
• Vanilla Bean Sugar
• Vanilla sugar is the perfect way to use up scraped vanilla pods that you’ve used in other recipes like crème brûlée. Save the pods in a baggie, and then decant the sugar into a bowl. Use your fingers, and get some of the sugar into the crack in the split vanilla bean; then scrub with the sugar as though you were scouring a pan with salt. You won’t believe how much vanilla is still left inside, and it is more than enough to make vanilla sugar for these beignets.