My Sweet Malaysia: Kuih Keria

I was kinda proud when I decided on the theme for this year's Merdeka Open House. I thought it would be so easy to simply pick any of the lavish sweet traditional spread we have in Malaysia but how wrong I was. Well, all due to so many things I could cook up but I tell ya, it's not easy to decide on which recipe... decisions, decisions, decisions!

Anyway I ended up making Kuih Keria, one of my favourite local "doughnut", the other being the simple fried up dough with castor sugar coating which we can find in our local market or hawker stalls. Kuih Keria is doughnut shaped kuih made of 4 ingredients that are sweet potatoes, self-raising flour, baking powder and sugar for coating. Simple as that... usually the yellow variety of sweet potatoes are being used but this smart alec decided to make some multi-coloured ones just to spice up the entry.



I bought some purple, orange and yellow (well, I thought it was yellow but after steaming they still look whitish!!!) sweet potatoes just to experiment. After steaming them separately, I mashed them up. I find the orange version is easist to mash and it's soft plus very moist where else the other two were kinda dry. I had to add a little water to bind the dough up. After frying them up, I noticed the orange ones puffed up nicely but the other two retained it's original shape.



The original Kuih Keria usually have a hardened sugar syrup coating but I find them too sweet, hence I just coat mine with caster sugar.





The test bunnies only gave praise to the orange version and I know Capn't Hook would loved to throw the other 2 versions at the wall to see if they could make any dents on the wall hehe. So I should know better to adhere to the experts (recipe/cookbook writers) by using the said ingredient instead of pandai-pandai (cleverly) modifying them to my fancy.

Kuih Keria

300g yellow or orange sweet potatoes, peeled and cubed
120g self-raising flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
2 cups oil for deep frying
Caster sugar for sprinkling

1. Place the cubed sweet potatoes on a plate and steam until soft, about 15 mins. mash them, removing and discarding any fibre.

2. Placed the mashed sweet potatoes in a mixing bowl. Combine with self raising flour and baking powder. Knead into a soft dough.

3. Divide dough into 30g pieces. Dust hands lightly with flour and roll each dough piece into a round blall. Flatten it slightly with the back of your hand until it's about 7cm large. Slowly using your finger to poke a hole through and fashion dough into a ring. Set aside. Repeat with the rest of the dough.

4. Heat oil in a wok over medium-high fire. When smoking hot, add dough rings in batches. Deep fry for 5-8 mins or until golden brown. Remove and drain on paper towel.

5. Sprinkle caster sugar over and serve hot.

Do wait up and come back on Merdeka Day for the round up of all recipes submitted for this year's Merdeka Open House!

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