Easy Sopapillas Recipe | Gimme Some Oven

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This restaurant-style sopapilla recipe is easy to make at home with pantry ingredients and always a crowd fave.  Sprinkle your sopapillas in powdered sugar or dip in cinnamon-sugar — up to you!

Have you ever tried making a batch of homemade sopapillas?

If not, I say it’s time! ♡

These irresistibly soft and sweet fry breads (also known as sopaipillas) are surprisingly easy to make with just a handful of everyday pantry ingredients.  No yeast needed!  Simply mix together a quick dough, roll and cut it out into your desired shapes, fry until puffy and golden, and then serve immediately while the sopapillas are nice and hot.  I always grew up eating sopapillas that were also sprinkled with powdered sugar or cinnamon-sugar, which I highly recommend.  And while we’re already at it with the sugar-and-carbohydrate bomb, you should definitely go ahead and serve them up New-Mex/Tex-Mex-style with lots of honey for dipping or drizzling too.

Sopapillas are the perfect fun dessert to serve with New Mexican, Tex-Mex or Mexican food.  (Variations are also served with Argentinian, Chilean and Uruguan food too!)  And when served hot and fresh outta the fryer, look out, because they are downright irresistible.

Let’s make some sopapillas, friends!

Sopapilla Ingredients:

Different countries and cultures around the Americas all tend to make their sopapillas (pronounced: soh-pah-pee-yahs) a slightly different way.  But this is the sweet donut-y version — inspired more by Tex-Mex and New Mexican cuisine — that I grew up loving and have made at home a few times over the years.  To make these sweet sopapillas, you will need the following ingredients:

• Flour: Just basic all-purpose flour.  (I have not tested this recipe with other flours, but if you do, feel free to leave a note in the comment section below!)
• Baking powder: To help them bubble up into little pillows in the fryer.
• Fine sea salt: To bring out all of those delicious flavors.
• Coconut oil: Traditional sopapillas are typically made with shortening, which you are welcome to use, but I prefer to use coconut oil or butter instead.
• Warm water: To bring the dough together.
• Oil: Any high-heat oil that you prefer for frying.
• Sugar: Either powdered sugar or cinnamon-sugar (1/2 cup granulated sugar mixed with 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon) for sprinkling or dipping.
• Honey: For drizzling or dipping once the sopapillas are served.

How To Make Sopapillas:

Here is a basic overview of the steps to make sopapillas!  Full instructions included in the recipe below.

1. Make the dough. Whisk together the dry ingredients, cut in the coconut oil, then mix in the warm water until a loose dough forms.
2. Knead and rest the dough. Use your hands to knead the dough for 2 minutes or so, until smooth.  (I usually just do this in the mixing bowl itself, but you could turn it out onto a floured surface to knead if you prefer.)  Then form it into a ball, cover and let it rest for about 20 minutes.
3. Roll out the dough. Roll the dough out evenly so that it is about 1/4-inch thick, then cut into 2.5-inch squares, triangles, or whatever shape you prefer.
4. Heat the oil. Meanwhile, as you are rolling out the dough, heat your oil until reaches 375°F.  (Then keep an eye on the temperature of the oil, lowering the heat if needed to maintain that temperature.)
5. Fry the dough. Once the oil is hot, very carefully lay a dough square in the hot oil.  It will sink for a moment then rise to the surface and will likely immediately bubble up.  (If it doesn’t, just add a spoonful or two of hot oil on top of the dough, and it should bubble up within a few seconds.)  Fry for 30-60 seconds, or until the bottom of the dough is lightly golden.  Flip and cook on the other side until lightly golden.  Then carefully transfer the sopapilla to a paper-towel-lined baking sheet.  Repeat with the remaining dough squares.  (I typically fry a batch of 3 at a time.)
6. Sprinkle and serve.  Sprinkle (or dip) the cooked sopapillas with powdered sugar or cinnamon sugar.  Then serve while they’re still nice and warm and enjoy!

Possible Variations:

Want to customize your sopapilla recipe?  Feel free to…

• Omit the extra sweetener: No need to sprinkle/dip the sopapillas in extra sugar.  You can just dip them in honey and call it good!
• Use a natural sweetener: Alternately, feel free to use coconut sugar (or any other more natural sweetener) in place of powdered sugar or granulated sugar in the cinnamon-sugar.
• Add extra spices: For a warmer spice twist, feel free to use pumpkin pie spice (in place of cinnamon) in the cinnamon-sugar mixture.
• Add flaky sea salt: Omit the salt from the dough and instead sprinkle a tiny pinch of flaky sea salt on each sopapilla too.
• Make them vegan: Omit the honey and be sure to use coconut oil or vegan butter in the sopapillas.
• Cut out larger, smaller, or different shapes: I cut out 2.5-inch squares for the batch of sopapillas photographed here.  But you could make the squares larger or smaller, if you prefer.  Or you could opt to cut out rectangles, triangles, or any other shape that you would like!  As long as you roll the dough out to even thickness, different shapes should still bubble up well.

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