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Sopaipilla was recognized as an official state pastry of Texas between 2003 and 2005 (along with strudel, a German pastry). Sopaipilla means "honey cake" in spanish - a crisp, puffy, deep-fried pastry thought to originate in Albuquerque, New Mexico over 300 years ago.
Sopaipilla is a staple on Mexican-American menus and a favorite dessert in the Southwest, usually served as a sweet (dusted with powdered sugar or with spiced honey or other sweet syrup) - but can also be filled with Tex-Mex ingredients like refried beans. A good sopaipilla is supposed to resemble a puffed-up pillow; if cut into a round shape, it's called a "buneulo."
Platter of sopaipillas - public domain photo on Wikipedia
Navajo Fry Bread
One of the foods many people today connect with the Navajo American Indian is fry bread. Native Americans in most areas traditionally ground corn/maize into flour for tortillas and other breadstuffs - baked, dried, fried and cooked on griddles. Native leavening agents were wood ash, lime, lye, and sourdough. Nut oils and animal fat were used to cook some of these corn-based foods.
Recipes for "traditional" Navajo Fry Bread (or Indian Fry Bread, Squaw Bread) call for ingredients (wheat flour & baking powder) and cooking utensils (frying pans, iron cauldrons) that were not traditionally used by Native Americans, but introduced to this continent by European explorers and pioneer families.
Deep fried doughs flavored with honey, nuts and spices were also enjoyed in ancient Greece, Rome and Egypt. In many places they were called "fritters." European and American cookbooks from all time periods abound with recipes for fried breadstuffs.
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