Sopaipillas from Potosí (Bolivia)

                                                                               Receta en Español

Sopaipillas are a typical treat from Potosí, a Bolivian city.

In all festivals and fairs of this city you can see street stalls selling this sweets, together with chambergos and tawa-tawas, all of them made of flour and sweetend with honey or syrup. 
Today I present the recipe of Sopaipillas, not only typical in Bolivia, but also in Chile, Argentina, Mexico, Peru, U.S.A and Spain where they are called Sopaipas.

The origin of this treat is Spain, it was taken to America by the spanish settlers. The repice has changed a Little. This way, every place has its own recipe of Sopaipillas. 

Here you have the way they make them in Potosí, Bolivia:


Ingredients (70 simple sopaipilla):

-  200 grams margarine or butter.
-  230 grams ground panela (or Brown sugar).
-  4 eggs.
-  800 grams flour.
-  1 sachet yeast.
-  1 teaspoon vanilla extract or vanilla powder.
-  Cane syrup.
-  Powdered sugar or grated coconut to sprinkle over the sopaipillas.

Method:

1- Put in a bowl butter at room temperatura together with Brown sugar or panela, use a mixer to mix well. If you use ground panela the mixer will be good to grind it thinner.

2- Add eggs, mix well:

3- Add vanilla and flour, mix all the ingredients with encircling movements with the help of a spatula:

4- Add yeast and keep on mixing. Kneat the dough until you get an homogeneous mixture. Let stand for half an hour.

5- Sprinkle some flour over a Surface, spread dough with the help of a rolling pin, dough must be 1 cm thick.

6- Take a round mold ,about 6 cm of diameter and cut the dough.

7- Put baking paper over a baking tray and place the cut dough on it.
Preheat oven at 170ºC, then cook sopaipillas for 10 minutes at the same temperature, heat up and down.

8- Once sopaipillas are cooled , it is time to bath them in Cane syrup. Take a brush and paint with the syrup just one face of the half of the 'cookie', to form sopaipilla join two 'cookies' placing the cane syrup in the middle.

9- Then paint the top surface and borders. Sopaipilla can be formed by two 'cookies' or just one, always leaving the lower part without cane syrup. 

10- Sprinkle powdered sugar or grated coconut over the sopaipilla. And that is!.

My comments to the Recipe

It has a natural and wonderful taste , grated cocunut goes very well with panela and cane syrup, it is soft an delicate.
I made the recipe with margarine , I suppose with butter it is even tastier ,but it could be heavier.

Where to by the ingredients

Panela and cane syrup can be bought at latin food stores. I bought it at  Hermanos Machado 24 , Calle Collados. Metro quintana.

Here you have a link to my favourite cooking tools where you can find my spices grinder:  

Favourite cooking tools

                                                                  By Caleb Moore (xrmap flag collection) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons