Fried Sweet Potato Cake
If you’ve ever had Japanese mochi, you’ve had sweet rice flour. (It’s also called glutinous flour, but celiacs need not worry — glutinous refers to the fact that it’s sticky; gluten-containing flours/grains, on the other hand, are glutenous.) Aside from mochi, though, Americans rarely use sticky rice flour in any recipes. Most of the time, I don’t, either, because it’s so darned sticky that it doesn’t work well in standard situations. If you heat it at all, you’re looking at one heckuva sticky mess, such as the time I attempted to make roux with sticky rice flour and wound up with a clumped ball instead. Oops…
But that tackiness sure does come in handy when you want to make a Cambodian fried cake! I’ve modified this idea to make a crepe-like snack that doesn’t require nearly as much precious ghee or time as a rounded one would. The sticky rice flour provides perfect stretchability for a crunchy/soft spiced treat!
Cambodian Fried Sweet Potato Cake (gluten-free)
1 lb. sweet potatoes, either canned or freshly simmered and then mashed (1″ cubes usually take about 10 minutes of simmering to soften them)
1 1/4 cups sticky rice flour
1 T. curry powder
About 1″ section of peeled and freshly-minced ginger root or 1 tsp. of dried ginger
Ghee or coconut oil
Mix potatoes with flour and spices, using your hands if necessary. (Scrunching the dough together with your fingers is more fun than using a spoon!) Dough will be very sticky and soft. You may need to coat your hands with a bit of additional flour to separate the dough into at least 12 equal pieces and then smush each one into a flat disk. Stacking them onto pieces of wax paper helps, especially if you’d like to only make half the cakes and save the remainder of the dough for later. (You can refrigerate the dough for 4-5 days.)
Fry the individual cakes in ghee or coconut oil over medium heat, adding enough fat to cover the surface of the dough. (The flatter the cake, the less cooking fat you’ll need; also, choose a pan that just fits the cake so that the cooking fat is snuggled right up against the cake’s edges rather than trickling off to the sides and being wasted.) Depending on how thin the cake is, it may brown in 3 minutes or fewer, so keep a close eye on it. As soon as the bottom side is golden brown, flip over and cook the other side, again cooking until the surface is golden to medium brown.
Remove from pan and let drain on paper towel while you make the next cake. These tasty cakes are best served warm/hot, so feel free to briefly reheat them if necessary.
Enjoy!
Print This Post
Tags: cakes, cambodian, curry powder, ginger, gluten-free, sweet potatoes
