Vegan pumpkin snails with orange buttercream
Whether it's gnocchi or pancakes, lasagna or brownies – in autumn, nothing is safe from pumpkin in our house! And so today we're also serving our beloved cinnamon rolls in an orange edition.
- For the dough:
- 300 g Hokkaido pumpkin (for 200 g pumpkin puree)
- 100 ml warm water
- 150 ml warm plant-based milk
- 1 cube (42 g) fresh yeast
- 3 tablespoons brown sugar
- 600 g flour
- 1 tsp salt
- 50 g vegan butter (e.g. Vioblock from Violife)
- For the filling:
- 100 g whole cane sugar
- 3 EL Pumpkin Spice
- 1 pinch of salt
- 125g vegan butter at room temperature (e.g. Vioblock from Violife)
- 50 g pecans
- For the orange buttercream:
- 100g vegan butter at room temperature (e.g. Vioblock from Violife)
- 150 g icing sugar
- 0.25 TL Vanilleextrakt
- 0.5 Orange (abrasion)
- 1 tbsp orange juice
- 1 pinch of salt
- Aside from that:
- Pecan nuts for garnish
- Pumpkin puree:
- Peel and deseed the Hokkaido pumpkin, then cut it into small pieces. Either cook it in a pot with a little water or steam it in a sieve over simmering water until soft. Then purée it thoroughly, weigh out 200 g, and let the purée cool.
- Dough:
- Pour warm water and plant-based milk into a large bowl. Crumble the fresh yeast with your hands and stir it in along with a small amount of brown sugar. Let the mixture stand for about 10 minutes, until small bubbles form on the surface.
- Meanwhile, melt the vegan butter and let it cool until it is lukewarm at most. Add the melted vegan butter and the pumpkin puree to the yeast mixture and mix well. Combine the flour with the salt and the remaining brown sugar, then gradually add this mixture to the yeast mixture and mix well. Knead the dough for about 5-10 minutes until smooth – either by hand or with a stand mixer. Add more flour if needed if the dough is too sticky.
- Shape the dough into a ball and place it in a lightly oiled bowl. Cover with a clean kitchen towel and let it rise in a warm place for about 1-2 hours, until the dough has doubled in volume. If you want to prepare the dough in advance, you can also let it rise, covered, overnight in the refrigerator.
- Fill and bake:
- For the filling, combine raw cane sugar, pumpkin spice, and a pinch of salt. Chop the pecans.
- Once the dough has risen, dust the work surface with flour and roll the dough out on it into a large rectangle that is about 1 cm thick and about 30x50 cm wide.
- Spread the vegan butter over the dough and sprinkle with the sugar mixture and chopped pecans, leaving a 1-2 cm border on all sides. Now, starting from the longer side, tightly roll up the dough.
- Divide the dough roll into 10-12 equal pieces. This can be done either with a knife or with kitchen twine, which you slide under the dough and then pull the ends of the twine in opposite directions over the dough.
- Place the pumpkin snails in a greased baking tin and let them rise again for about 30 minutes.
- Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 180°C (fan-assisted) and bake the pumpkin snails for about 20-25 minutes, until golden brown. Then remove from the oven and let cool.
- Orange buttercream:
- While the pumpkin snails bake and cool, prepare the orange buttercream. Beat room-temperature vegan butter with powdered sugar until creamy. Then add vanilla extract, orange zest, orange juice, and salt, and mix well. Add more powdered sugar if desired for a firmer and sweeter buttercream.
- Serve:
- Toast the pecans in a dry pan. Then remove them from the pan and roughly chop them.
- Spread the vegan buttercream on the cooled pumpkin snails and sprinkle with the chopped pecans.
For the filling, we use room-temperature vegan butter, raw cane sugar, pumpkin spice, a pinch of salt, and pecans. Of course, there's plenty of room for your own preferences: you can omit the nuts or substitute other nuts (ground nuts work well too). If you'd rather stick with the classic sugar and cinnamon, feel free. However, I highly recommend using room-temperature vegan butter. With melted butter, the filling often leaks out the sides as soon as you roll the dough. The unbaked rolls often become so soft and unstable that they lose their shape, making them difficult to cut and place in the pan. It's often a complete mess, and that's unnecessary. Therefore, it's best to spread room-temperature vegan butter on the dough. Another tip: don't cut the dough with a knife (it often squashes everything together). Instead, take some kitchen twine, wrap it around the dough roll, and then pull it tight. This way, you'll get perfect pumpkin rolls, I promise!
After the pumpkin snails have risen again, they go into the oven. You can then serve them warm or cooled, as you prefer – they taste fantastic either way. If you spread the vegan buttercream on them while they're still warm, you'll notice it melts immediately. If you're not in the mood for buttercream frosting at all, you can also prepare a classic icing or use melted chocolate.
You'll notice that vegan butter features prominently in this recipe – we use almost a whole block of it, specifically from Violife. You're probably already familiar with their vegan cheese alternatives (we love their EPIC MATURE block with cheddar flavor, for example!). The VIOBLOCK is a new addition to their product line. It's based on plant-based oils and fats from coconut, sunflower, and rapeseed, and also contains a few vitamins (D2, B1, B2, B6, B12, and folic acid), which is always great for a vegan diet. You can use this vegan butter alternative pretty much anywhere you would use butter – on bread, but also for cooking and baking.
For anyone who wants to try the recipe including the vegan butter alternative, we have a small coupon here that will save you 1 euro on vegan butter at the supermarket.
