Have you heard about picarones? Picarones are ring-shaped fried sweets made with wheat flour dough mixed with pumpkin, and sometimes sweet potato, dipped in flavored chancaca honey. It is a traditional dish of Peruvian and Chilean cuisine but you can find them in other places like Colombia and México.
The story goes that Picarón had its origin in pre-Hispanic times, when the indigenous people prepared a similar recipe based on sweet potato and pumpkin, ingredients that were part of the diet of the Incas.
Peru regained its independence from Spain in the 19th century, but modified buñuelos, now known as picarones, had become an integral part of Afro-Peruvian culture. Families passed down recipes from generation to generation and this comforting sweet found its way to harvest festivals, religious processions and the streets.
In addition to the traditional picarones, there are options such as picarón with candied fruit, corn picarón, sweet potato picarón, chocolate picarón, lucuma picarón, mango picarón, etc.. We found several alternatives that are bordering on the well-known Magdalena festival. Picarones are usually consumed in the month of October for the celebration of the Lord of Miracles. One of the dates where the consumption of Peruvian sweets intensifies such as: Nougat, rice pudding, mazamorra, zambito rice and you cannot miss its good portion of picarones bathed in chancaca honey.
Picarones are usually served in the chancaca syrup but they lose some of the crunch from the outside crust that I love so much so I just serve them with a bit of syrup in the plate, place them on top so they soak some of the syrup and serve more syrup in a cup so you can have more without losing some of the crusty outside that makes the texture so good i bn my opinion. But this is up to you, if you prefer to soak them in syrup the traditional way, go ahead they’ll be delicious anyway. If you can’t find the dig leaves is fine, the honey will still be full of flavor. As a chef I always encourage fresh ingredients but you can sure substitute the fresh purée for canned purée to save some time and effort.
This may seem like much but it’s a pretty simple process, it just takes some time in letting the dough rest. Let the dough rest for the established time so that it gains volume and at room temperature. When frying the dough we must notice the change in color to remove it since they cook very quickly. This tips make a difference in making things work or go wrong.
Now that you have an insight into this, let’s get cooking!
Ingredients:
To make the dough:
750 g Sweet Potato
1 kg Pumpkin
2 tsp of anise
60 g brown sugar
10 g dry yeast
650 g unprepared flour
1 tbsp water
1 tbsp salt
Oil for frying
To make the honey:
250 g Chancaca
1 tbsp Water
1/4 kg brown sugar
2 cinnamon sticks
1 tbsp orange juice
2 fig leaves
5 cloves
Method:
Honey preparation:
We cut the chancaca into medium pieces and put it in a pot.
We add 1 cup of water.
We add 250 grams of brown sugar, orange juice, 2 fig leaves, cinnamon sticks, cloves and stir from time to time until it takes on a texture like honey. As a final step we will strain and reserve the honey.
Dough preparation:
We cut the sweet potatoes into medium cubes and put them in a pot, pour water to cover them and let them cook for 10 minutes.
After 10 minutes, strain the sweet potato and reserve the water.
We mash the sweet potato until we get the texture of puree (Reserve)
We cut the pumpkin into medium cubes and carry out the same procedure as with the sweet potato, in the same way we reserve the water and puree it (Reserve)
We put 200 ml of the water that we reserved from the sweet potato and 100 ml of the pumpkin water (both hot) in a bowl.
We add 2 tablespoons of anise, 60 grams of brown sugar, 10 grams of yeast and integrate everything.
Once integrated we are going to add 500 grams of the pumpkin puree that we prepared and 300 grams of the sweet potato puree that we made.
We mix and add 650 grams of unprepared flour, we are going to mix by hand for about 5 minutes until we have everything very compact. We cover our mixture and let it rest at room temperature for 2 hours.
Once the 2 hours have passed, we will continue kneading for about 5 minutes until we have an ideal texture. We cover again and let it rest for 2 more hours (Reserve)
In a bowl we put a cup of water with 1 tablespoon of salt, this is to put our fingers in and prevent the dough from sticking to our hands. You can use a piping bag with a big hole so the dough goes through easily as I show you in the clip below. But if you don’t have one just keep reading the procedure to make them by hand.
We take a little dough that we prepared and we form a ring, we pour it carefully over the hot oil (abundant oil that covers the entire dough) and with the help of a stick we move from the center of our dough to give the shape.
We withdraw and bon appetit.
Serve it with the prepared chancaca honey.
Enjoy!
