Healthy doughnuts?

Silly doughnut found here

So, healthy doughnuts:  cruel myth, or delicious reality?  According to Jessica Seinfeld, author of Deceptively Delicious (still one of my current favorite cookbooks), you can make a doughnut healthy and tasty.  And, since my wonderful husband just bought a doughnut mold pan for me, I get to test it out!

A note on doughnuts in general:  I hate doughnuts.  That is to say, I looooove doughnuts and can eat my weight in them if no one is looking.  Which is why I hate doughnuts.  They are one of the truly, awfully, no redeeming value bad for you foods that I simply can not resist.  Especially if I have one.  Then, I am toast.  Or, if you are what you eat, I am doughnut.  So, the possibility of a doughnut that a)doesn't taste like fried and glazed heaven, and b) isn't all that bad for me the kids, is very exciting.

The other thing I was excited about with this recipe is that it calls for pumpkin, which I had leftovers of in the fridge!  I love using leftovers.  (That might make me weird.  I don't know, I think that may be the first time I've said/typed it out loud.)

Without further ado (or rambling...) here is the recipe:

Pumpkin Doughnuts

Ingredients:

1/2 cup firmly packed light or dark brown sugar

1/2 cup canned pumpkin puree

1/2 cup sweet potato puree
(note: I was fresh out of sweet potato puree...ie: never had any...so I used 1 cup of pumpkin)
1/2 cup skim milk
1 large egg white
1 Tablespoon trans-fat-free soft tub margarine spread (or butter)

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1 cup all-purpose flour (or, you guessed it!  TJ's White Whole Wheat Flour...that reminds me...I need more!)

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 cup confectioner's sugar

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  

Coat mini-doughnut mold or mini-muffin tins with cooking spray.

In a large bowl, beat together the sugar, pumpkin and sweet potato purees, milk, egg white, margarine and vanilla. 

Add the flour, baking soda, baking powder and cinnamon and mix until completely incorporated.

Pour the batter into a gallon-sized plastic bag and cut the bottom tip off of one side of the bag.   Then, squeeze the batter into the doughnut or mini-muffin mold.
(Note: make sure to only fill the doughnut molds halfway!  This was my first time trying out the doughnut pan, and I filled the first couple waaaay too full.)
Bake until the tops are lightly browned and toothpick comes out clean when inserted, about 10 minutes.  Turn the doughnuts out onto a rack to cool. Coat with confectioner's sugar when cool.

You might wonder, with a recipe that makes a dozen, why is there only one little lonely doughnut on the plate?

There probably would have been 5 thumbs up, but my kids ate the doughnuts so fast, my husband never got one!
That said, I actually was not perfectly happy with how these turned out.  I would definitely make them again, but with some tweaks. Tweak #1: more pumpkin pie spice!  I thought these were a little bland.  Tweak #2: Well, ok, not technically a tweak, rather a correction...I would use the sweet potato, or maybe banana instead of another 1/2 cup of pumpkin.  Again, bland.  Tweak #3: Double the recipe...after I buy another doughnut pan!