Kuih Keria (Sweet Potato Doughnuts)

It’s so hard to get really good kuih-muih (local desserts) these days. Gone are the days where you can just walk out from your house and to the makcik’s stall across the road for some delicious kuih. Sure you can easily get them at the shopping malls but honestly they are so awful tasting and not to mention EXPENSIVE! Imagine paying close to RM1 for a tiny piece when last time you could easily get 3 pieces for the same amount. Although making kuih is quite a tedious work, but better than buying for something that make you go “arggh doesn’t taste nice at all and what a waste of money!'”  

And since Ashley’s going for her enrichment classes on weekdays I try to make a dessert or baked goodies during that 2.5 hours of free time so that we could have it for tea or she could bring to school as her snacks. And seeing that I have some sweet potatoes and gula melaka (palm sugar) at home I decided to make my all time favourite, Kuih Keria. It’s like your regular doughnuts only difference it’s made from sweet potatoes minus the yeast and it’s deep fried then coated with sugar syrup. I prefer the ones coated with gula melaka rather than the usual, white sugar but you can always use the former if you don’t have gula melaka at home.  

You Need  

300grams of sweet potatoes (about two medium sized)

1/2 cup of all purpose flour (plus extra for dusting)

1 teaspoon of baking powder

1 teaspoon of cinnamon *optional  

a pinch of salt enough

oil for frying

For sugar coating 

1 tube of gula melaka or 1/3 cups of white sugar 

3 tablespoons of water 

How To 

1. Peel, wash and cut the sweet potatoes into cubes. Steam and once cooked, mash them.

2. Sift flour and baking powder together and combine all the ingredients. Knead to form a smooth dough.

3. You can either roll the dough out to 1 inch and use a doughnut cutter or you can shape a ping pong size dough into a ball, flatten it and make a hole in the middle using your finger like a ring

4. Heat oil in a wok, deep fry the doughnuts over medium flame till golden brown. Dish out and drain.

To prepare the sugar coating  

1.Place the sugar or gula melaka and water in a small heavy-based saucepan and heat gently until sugar melts. Careful not to caramelize the white sugar, you only need a thick sugar syrup not caramel syrup.
2. Add in the fried kuih keria, coat well. I tried to cool the sugar coated doughnuts on parchment paper, HUGE MISTAKE as the doughnuts sticks to it luckily I managed to get the doughnuts onto a plate.  

Cooking Tutorials
 Ingredients
How To
 

P.S Do forgive my ugly looking doughnuts, had a pretty hard time trying to shape them.