Pampoenkoekies (and they are gluten free)

Pampoenkoekies is a wonderful addition to any meal… You can use many types of pumpkin and in South Africa the most common pumpkin used is Herbert Squash. When we lived in England we could not find it though, so we tried butternut. It worked wonderfully…

The trick is to make sure the pumpkin is very dry. If it is watery, the pampoenkoekies will stick and won’t be easy to make.

Ingredients:
2 cups of pumpkin (1 medium sized butternut squash)
4 tablespoons of flour (mix white or brown rice, tapioca and chick pea flour in equal quantities)
2 teaspoons of gluten free baking powder
Salt
1 egg
Oil

# If you are not a celiac, you can just use regular wheat flour instead of the mix

Method:
1. Boil the pumpkin in a bit of water until soft (between 10 and 15 minutes). Make sure the pumpkin is very dry before using. Mash the pumpkin.
2. Add the flour, baking powder, salt and egg. Mix well.
3. Warm up a bit of oil in a frying pan. Place spoons full of pumpkin in the pan and fry on both sides until light brown.
4. Sprinkle cinnamon sugar on top or make a sweet syrup to pour over.

Sweet syrup:
1 tablespoon of butter/margarine
3/4 cup of water
3/4 cup of milk
1 1/2 cups of sugar
1 tablespoon of cornflour

1. Bring the butter, water and sugar to the boil.
2. Mix the cornflour with a little bit of water and add. Let it boil for about 2 minutes.
3. Pour warm syrup over the pampoenkoekies instead of the cinnamon sugar.