Pumpkin simmered slowly in panela syrup with cinnamon and cloves until the pieces are soft and the syrup has thickened around them. Five ingredients and a bit over an hour.
Panela is not brown sugar
The two get treated as interchangeable and they are not. Brown sugar is refined white sugar with molasses added back. Panela is cane juice boiled down and never refined at all, which leaves everything that was in the juice still in the block.
It tastes of molasses, and slightly mineral, and it is darker. A pound of it in three cups of water with a kilo of pumpkin is what makes this dessert taste Colombian rather than simply sweet.
It arrives as a hard block or cone and has to be broken up before it goes in the pot, which is what the second step means and what the old translation lost when it turned panela into brown sugar.
Covered, then uncovered
Thirty minutes with the lid on. The pumpkin softens in steam and takes up the panela syrup, and almost no water leaves the pot.
Then the lid comes off for another thirty to forty-five minutes. Now water evaporates, the syrup concentrates and it starts clinging to the pumpkin instead of surrounding it. This is the stage that turns a pot of sweet pumpkin into a dulce.
The instruction here had been mangled into until the thickened thickens. What it meant was until the syrup thickens.
Knowing when to stop
The syrup should coat the pieces rather than pool under them, and a piece of pumpkin should collapse under gentle pressure from a spoon.
It carries on thickening as it cools, considerably, so a pot that looks slightly loose on the stove will be right at the table. A pot that looks right on the stove will be stiff and sticky by the time it is cold.
Five cinnamon sticks and five cloves
That is a lot of spice for one kilo of pumpkin, and it is deliberate: an hour of simmering pulls a great deal out of them and the panela is strong enough to stand up to it.
Whole sticks and whole cloves rather than ground, so they can be fished out at the end. Ground cinnamon would cloud the syrup and there would be no way to take it back out.
More Colombian sweets
- Pumpkin cake — the same squash, baked.
- Creamy pumpkin soup — the savoury use.
- Mashed pumpkin with hogao — savoury, with a sofrito.
- Papaya dessert — the same treatment, different fruit.
Dulce de Auyama FAQ
Whole cane juice boiled down and set into a solid block, unrefined. It tastes of molasses and minerals in a way brown sugar does not, and it is what gives this dessert its dark colour and its depth. Piloncillo is the same thing under a Mexican name.
It will work and it will taste different: sweeter and flatter, without the molasses depth. If it is all you have, use it, but the dish is named after the panela for a reason.
Because it comes as a hard block and a whole one will sit in the bottom of the pot barely dissolving while everything above it cooks. Broken into pieces it dissolves into the water in the first few minutes.
Two different jobs. Covered for thirty minutes, the pumpkin softens in the steam and syrup. Uncovered for another thirty to forty-five, water evaporates and the syrup thickens around the pieces. Skip the second stage and the pumpkin sits in something watery.
When the syrup coats the pumpkin rather than pooling underneath it, and a piece gives completely under a spoon. It thickens further as it cools, so take it off slightly before it looks right.
Either. Warm it is a spoon dessert; cold it firms up and the syrup gets stickier. In Colombia it turns up both ways, often with a piece of fresh cheese alongside.
The Colombian pumpkin, also spelled ahuyama. Dense, dry-fleshed and deep orange, nothing like a carving pumpkin. Butternut squash is the closest substitute in an American supermarket.
📖 Recipe
Dulce de Auyama (Colombian Pumpkin Dessert with Panela)
Imprimir Pin ComentarIngredients
- 1 pumpkin (about 1 kg)
- 1 lb panela (broken into pieces)
- 5 cinnamon sticks
- 5 cloves
- 3 cups water
Notas
Instructions
- Wash the pumpkin well, cut it in half and scrape out the seeds and the stringy membranes.
- Cut the pumpkin into medium or small pieces and put them in a large pot with the panela broken into pieces, the cinnamon, the cloves and the water.
- Let it boil over medium heat for about 30 minutes with the lid on.
- Uncover it and let it simmer for another 30 to 45 minutes, until the syrup has thickened and the pumpkin is very soft.
- Take it off the heat and serve.
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