Sweet potatoes and pumpkin are often made into doughnut-like fritters in South America, such as picarones and sopaipillas. These sweet potato doughnuts have a more North American-style cake-like texture. They are very easy to make, and do not need to rise like yeast doughnuts. All you need is a spice cake mix, mashed sweet potatoes and buttermilk. Roll these doughnuts in cinnamon sugar for a truly fantastic treat.
Prep Time: 10 minutes
Cook Time: 15 minutes
Total Time: 25 minutes
Ingredients:
- 1 spice cake mix
- 3/4 cup cooked, mashed sweet potato
- 1/4 cup buttermilk
- 1-2 cups all purpose flour
- Canola oil for frying
- 1 1/2 cups sugar
- 1 tablespoon cinnamon
Preparation:
- Mix the sweet potato, cake mix, and buttermilk together in a large bowl. Stir in the flour, 1/2 cup at a time, until you have a soft dough.
- Turn dough out onto the counter and knead gently, adding enough flour to make a dough that does not stick to the countertop.
- Dust counter with more flour, and roll dough out into a rectangle about 3/4 inch thick. Let dough rest for five minutes.
- While the dough is resting, heat several inches of oil to 350 degrees.
- With a doughnut cutter (or one large and one small biscuit cutter) cut out the doughnuts and place them on a cookie sheet lined with wax paper.
- Gather up scraps after cutting out as many doughnuts as possible, knead gently, let rest, then re-roll dough and cut more. You can save the doughnut holes and fry them too, or reroll them to make more doughnuts.
- Fry doughnuts in batches, turning once, until dark golden brown and puffed, about 3-4 minutes. Drain doughnuts on paper towels briefly.
- Stir cinnamon into sugar in a shallow bowl. Dip warm doughnuts into the cinnamon sugar, turning to coat both sides.
Makes about 16 doughnuts, depending on size.
