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| Yeah, my snacks normally look this good. |
Kyle and I just moved from two separate, fully-functional apartments into one (very small) coach house apartment. It has been a very trying experience to find places for everything we own, but I think it will be good for us. In the unpacking process, I found a can of pumpkin pie filling that I accidentally purchased while trying to buy pumpkin purée. Nearly all pumpkin recipes call for pumpkin pie purée and specifically NOT pie filling, so I have been at a loss with what to do with it (yes I know: pie is the obvious answer, but I'm not a huge fan so I wanted something else). So it sat on the shelf, and was eventually moved to this new apartment. I refuse to let it take up space here, so I vowed to find something to do with it.
After a few days of staring at the can (I had it sitting on the back of my stove, next to my Tetley tea bags - essential for my morning routine), and after moving the bread machine from place to place to place, I had the 'brilliant' idea to combine bread machine dough with pumpkin pie filling. But in what form? Perhaps crescent rolls, inspired by that apple dumpling recipe I tried last fall? Would it work? Crescent roll dough + pumpkin pie filling? Could it be so simple?
The day after this flash of inspiration, I saw a friend's Pin for pumpkin croissants. I'm not crazy! It's been done! Alas, the recipe called for purée. But I blundered forward anyway in my quest to use the pie filling, and thus I made pumpkin pie crescent rolls. Overall it was a success, I'd say. They're very tasty, with a good balance of sweet and savoury without being too sweet. They're quite doughy, which is a result of this dough recipe, and they'd be fluffier (and probably sweeter?) if you used Pillsbury dough.
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| Straight out of the oven... |
Recipe notes: I changed the croissant recipe by omitting cream cheese (because I loathe cream cheese). I changed the dough recipe by subbing in some whole wheat flour and by using brown sugar instead of white. Also, I added a tsp of vanilla which made the dough smell really good but I'm not sure that I can taste it once baked. I split the dough into three uneven balls to roll out and cut triangles. Only after the first bunch did I realize that rolling a giant circle and cutting pizza slices would be better than trying to make a big rectangle... And then on the last tiny bit of dough I realized that cinnamon bun-style rolls would be way easier - roll a rectangle, smother the whole thing with pie filling, roll up and slice. And they taste the same as crescent rolls so... go with whatever you prefer. Oh and lastly, I still didn't use up the whole can of pumpkin filling... even with 37 crescent rolls!
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| I couldn't resist and ate a few while they cooled... |
Pumpkin Pie Crescent Rolls
Ease: 1 very easy
Time: 3 somewhat quick
Ingredients: 2 easy
Source: Loosely based on
Shaken Together's pumpkin croissants. And I used
Food.com's bread machine roll dough, with some modifications.
Ingredients:
- 1 cup warm milk (70 to 80 degrees F.)
- 1/2 cup margarine
- 1/4 cup golden sugar
- 2 eggs
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 cup whole wheat flour
- 3 cups all-purpose white flour
- ~2 1/2 teaspoons active dry yeast (I spilled some from an old opened packet + 2 tsp from a new packet)
- 1 540mL can of pumpkin pie filling
- ~ 1 Tbsp white sugar
- ~ 1 tsp cinnamon
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| Dough - ready to go in the oven |
Directions:
- Combine dough ingredients (from milk to yeast) in bread machine in this order.
- Set dough setting and let the machine do its thing.
- When dough is done, turn it onto a lightly floured surface and roll (you may want to divide it into two pieces for this).
- Cut into triangles of approximately the same shape and dimensions. See recipe notes for tips. (My batch made 33 triangles and 4 cinnamon bun style rolls.)
- Spread some pumpkin pie filling (straight from the can) onto each triangle and roll it up.
- Grease a baking dish.
- Place the rolls in the dish with 1" spacing between each one.
- Sprinkle them with a mixture of cinnamon & sugar.
- Let them sit for 30-45 min.
- Bake at 375 degrees for 15 minutes.
