SWEET POTATO RICE DONUTS. NOT YOUR AVERAGE DONUT.

 I have never actually deep fried anything before.  Well, that is if you don't count attending an annual "deep fry day" party hosted by my boyfriend when we first started dating.  On that day, I watched and consumed a plethora of deep fried items, including cheeseburgers, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, cookies, and many other random food items that never needed to be deep fried but were somehow lucky enough to become the chosen ones of the day.  I wasn't gluten free at this point, clearly.  It's a bittersweet memory filled with surprisingly delicious tastes and also a fair amount of overly full tummies and general nausea by everyone in attendance.

So perhaps I should rephrase this to, I have never deep fried anything in my own kitchen, until now.  I had originally intended on baking these little doughy balls, in an effort to keep them as healthy as possible and thereby reduce guilt for all intended victims if we decided that we needed to eat the entire batch in one sitting.  As you have probably deduced by now, I did not end up baking them.  Blame a small birthday gathering for my darling little cousin that encouraged me to go full force into donut territory and break out the oil.  Or just blame me.  That's probably more accurate.

I did a ton of research on gluten free donuts, specifically ones using sweet potato as a main ingredient.  I was looking for a sweet potato style donut specifically, in order to make them less of a gluten free version of a real donut, and more of a delicious donut that just happens to be gluten free.  That has actually become my goal in a lot of my baking - instead of replacing everything gluten filled with gluten free flour, which is undeniably not only a more difficult product to work with but also has an inferior flavour and texture to wheat flour, I constantly try to work with recipes that are more creative and use completely different and unexpected ingredients.

Often this means working with foods and recipes from different regions or cultures.  Wheat flour is a serious staple in our western diets, but is not always as common in other ethnic foods.  Which is how I came across this sweet potato rice donut recipe.  Beyond Kimchee is a Korean inspired food blog where I found not only this recipe, but also a new type of flour as well.  The author of this blog gave full disclosure - these donuts are a doughy, chewy texture that is quite unlike a donut made with wheat flour.  That's what I like to see.  I am all for trying to recreate a gluten free chocolate chip cookie that brings you back to childhood even with a difficult diet restriction - but let's also explore and create new recipes and foods that don't just adapt to being gluten free, but celebrate it.  Well, let's try anyways!

So, the donuts.  These Korean style treats are covered in a cinnamon sugar mixture, so the first taste that hits your mouth is sweet and flavourful.  On the inside, the dough behaves more like an uncooked bread dough in that it's moist, chewy, and has a satisfying heft to it.  This is because of the first main ingredient, glutinous rice flour or sweet rice flour.  Despite its two names, this flour is neither sweet, nor full of gluten.  Typically used in Asian cooking, this flour is made from a shorter grain rice, the same kind you would see in sticky rice.  It has a higher starch content, and can be used in recipes that call for a stronger binding agent (you can bet I'm going to attempt a bechamel sauce with this stuff!).  The other main ingredient, the sweet potato, gives the donuts a beautiful pale orange colour inside the donut which is a great surprise after biting into one.  I opted to use brown sugar instead of white for my donuts, which complimented the sweet potato well, so the flavour was rich and deep but not overly sweet.  I also used grapeseed oil for frying which is a healthier oil choice than other more common types (although it would work with others too).

These sweet potato rice donuts were a hit.  Yes they were deep fried, but they were also delicious and we all couldn't resist have a second or third little donut that night.  A definite keeper for those special occasions.

Sweet Potato Rice Donuts
Adapted from Beyond Kimchee

2 medium sized sweet potatoes (will be about 1 1/2 cups cooked and mashed)
2 1/3 cups glutinous rice flour (also known as sweet rice flour)
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 - 1 cup hot milk
Grapeseed oil

1 cup sugar
2 teaspoons cinnamon

First, cook the potatoes.  Wash and scrub the potatoes thoroughly, then pierce the skins all over with a fork.  Place them on a paper towel lined plate and microwave for about 8 minutes, turning halfway.  When the potatoes are cooked, peel off the skin and discard, then mash.  Let it cool a bit so the mash is easy to handle with your hands.

In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt.  Add the mashed sweet potato and mix thoroughly until it consists of fine crumbs with larger pea sized chunks.  Add a 1/4 cup of the hot milk and mix with a spoon.  You want the dough to come together and resemble a bread dough.  Keep adding milk by the 1/4 cup as needed, stopping when you get to the correct consistency.  You'll know it's right when you are able to handle and knead it with your hands.  If you add too much milk, the dough may become too sticky and unworkable.  Just add more rice flour until you are back to a bread dough-like consistency.

Pull a piece at a time from the dough and roll it into a ball.  Try making them a little smaller than the 1" size, as they will puff up a bit when frying.  Roll all the dough into balls and cover with a towel to keep moist while frying in batches.

Mix together the sugar and cinnamon in a small bowl and set aside.

Heat a deep pan on medium to medium-low heat, and fill with about 1 inch of oil.  When the oil is hot, drop a few balls into the pan and start rolling them around.  I was able to do about 5 at a time in my pan.  You want to do as many as you can to keep it moving, but you don't want the pan to be so crowded that they are going to stick together or not roll around to cook evenly.  Use a metal sieve with a long handle if you have it to roll them around, or a spoon will work too.  Brown the balls on all sides so that you have a nice evenly cooked donut.  Try tipping the pan sometimes to create a deeper pool of oil.  It will take 5-10 minutes for the donuts to cook through.  Remove from the pan with your sieve, and place in a single layer on a paper towel lined dish.  Then start the next batch.  After they have cooled just enough to handle, roll the donuts in the cinnamon sugar mixture and place on a serving platter.

You can cook these earlier in the day, and then let them cool completely to room temperature.  The texture and chewiness will develop more this way.  Or, if you can't wait just serve them warm.