Pumpkin Rolls Recipe from Vietnam {Around the World in 12 Dishes}

It’s time again for my monthly post for “Around the World in 12 Dishes,” the series in which each month participating bloggers travel the world with their kids by cooking a dish from another country and perhaps reading a book, doing a craft, or learning fun facts about it.

This time we travel to Vietnam, and in celebration of the season we made these wonderful pumpkin rolls.  We took them to a play date, and the moms couldn’t stop talking about how soft and yummy they were!

I got the recipe from this fun Vietnamese cooking blog.   I had a hard time thinking of pumpkin rolls as being authentic Vietnamese food, but the recipe has a very authentic looking Vietnamese title (Bánh Bí Ngô Tí Hon), so I decided to go for it!  Below is the recipe, with converted measurements.  I did modify some of the proportions, which seemed off to me.  In particular, the ratio of wet to dry ingredients did not work for me, so I ended up added a great deal of extra flour in order to get the right consistency.  Also, I couldn’t find what “brown yeast” was, so I just used regular baking yeast with great results.

As you can see, because the consistency of the dough was still relatively wet (but I was worried that if I added any more flour the taste would be drastically altered), I wasn’t able to do the adorable design like she does, which makes the rolls look like actual pumpkins!  If you are able to make this work, please send the pictures, because it looks adorable!  But even if you aren’t able to achieve this (as I wasn’t), kids and parents will still love the pumpkin flavor of these delicious fall rolls.

Makes 13-14 large or 17-18 medium rolls

Ingredients

200ml whole milk (between 3/4 c and 1 c – most measuring cups for liquids have markings for ml as well as cups)
1 can of pumpkin = approx 2 c of pumpkin puree
200g butter = slightly less than 1 c
2 – 7 oz packets of yeast
1 T sugar
1 T brown sugar
1 t salt
1 egg
2 c whole wheat flour
2 c white flour
Warm water, approx. 1/4 c

To Make

1.Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Grease a large baking sheet (you may need two).

Warm the milk then add melted butter and pumpkin puree.  Mix well.

2. Add yeast packets, sugars, salt, egg, plus 1/4 c of warm water.  Stir well but gently

3. Add flours then mix with wooden spoon until smooth and soft.  Add more water or flour as needed to make smooth dough.

4. Cover the bowl with a clean cloth and let rest for 5 minutes.

5. Knead by hand for approx 10 minutes then let rest for at least one hour, until dough has risen and is no longer sticky.

6. Divide into small balls of equal size. (See the tutorial if you would like to try making these into mini pumpkins).

7. Arrange the balls on a greased baking sheet.  Allow room for them to rise more as they cook.

8. Brush tops with beaten egg yolk then bake for 10-15 minutes, until rolls begin to brown.

What have you been cooking up with your kids?

Check out the other participating blogs to see what they have been cooking up:

Adventures In Mommydom, Afterschool for Smarty Pants, All Done Monkey, Crafty Moms Share, Maroc Mama, Creative World of Varya, Glittering Muffins, Kid World Citizen, Mermaids’ Makings, The Educators’ Spin On It and The Mommy Talks.

If you try a dish from Vietnam, we’d love to hear about it! You can link up your dish or craft here to share your post on all the participating blogs: