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Sopaipilla is a fried dough pastry sweetened with honey and sometimes filled with meat, beans, or vegetables. It is popular in North, Central, and South America, with variations in Chile and Peru. The word “sopaipilla” comes from the Spanish word sopaipa, which refers to a fried dough with honey.
A sopaipilla, sometimes spelled sopapilla, is a piece of fried dough sweetened with honey. Sopaipillas are often referred to as “little pillows” due to their puffy appearance after frying. They are closely related to other fried dough desserts, such as donuts, bunuelos and churros.
The basic method of cooking a sopaipilla is to combine flour, oil and salt – and sometimes ingredients such as yeast or evaporated milk – into a soft dough. The dough is formed into balls or small triangles and dropped into a pot of hot oil. Each ball of dough is deep-fried until golden and “puffed” on one side, then flipped and deep-fried until golden and puffed all over.
Sopaipillas are traditionally served hot and are often made sweet with honey or sugar. They are also commonly made savory by adding a filling of meat, beans, or vegetables, similar to a taco or enchilada. Sopaipillas are also often substituted for bread or rolls.
Variations of sopaipillas can be found in some regions of North, Central and South America. In Chile, they are traditionally made with a winter squash, usually zapallo, although canned squash is also used. The squash is mixed with flour and lard to form the dough, and the finished pastry is often served with a citrus-cinnamon flavored unrefined brown sugar syrup. Chilean sopaipillas are sometimes served with condiments such as mustard, ketchup, butter, manjar, or a pepper sauce known as pebre. They’re most commonly eaten at teatime – particularly on cold, rainy days like pick-me-up.
In Peru, sopaipillas are called cachangas and are commonly eaten for breakfast. They are traditionally made with cornmeal. This variation is usually larger in size, but thinner and crunchier than other sopaipillas. In the United States, sopaipilla is popular throughout the Southwest and is most commonly associated with New Mexico, the city of Albuquerque in particular.
Many people argue that sopaipillas originated in Albuquerque in the late 1600s or early 1700s, but the pastry appears to have international roots as well. The word “sopaipilla” comes from the Spanish word sopaipa, which refers to a fried dough with honey. The Spanish word derives, in turn, from the Mozarabic word xopaipa, which referred to bread soaked in oil. Mozarabic was spoken by people in the Iberian Peninsula in Europe from the 5th century to the 8th century.
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