Dessert · Fried Syrup Rings

Picarones

📷 Closely related photo — Photo via Pexels/Unsplash — free for commercial use

Picarones beat the doughnut to the Americas — colonial-era Lima cooks were already frying these squash-and-sweet-potato rings decades before Spanish-style fritters caught on locally.

A yeasted dough of mashed squash and sweet potato is pinched off and stretched into rings, deep-fried until golden and airy, then drizzled with chancaca syrup made from boiled cane molasses, cinnamon and cloves — sold hot straight from cart-side fryers across Lima.

Why it's made this way: Enslaved and Indigenous cooks in colonial-era Lima adapted the Spanish buñuelo frying method to native squash and sweet potato, and the result outlasted the fritter it was copied from to become a dessert Peruvians now call entirely their own.