In our post on making quince paste, we mentioned we came across a recipe for doing the same thing with sweet potato. Dulce de Batata as it is also known. It sounded quite an interesting idea.
Dulce de batata is a traditional dessert from Argentina, Paraquay and Uruguay. You can even get it in a can!
Last night we decided to give it a go. We had one red kumara in the pantry so ours wasn’t going to be the beautiful golden colour but it was a yummy taste we were after. We started with this recipe but there seems be a bunch of steps missing, so this is what we did.
We peeled the kumara and chopped it into bits. We put it in a covered pot on the stove with lemon juice and a little water to steam cook it, adding more water if it it started to stick. Meanwhile we made the sugar syrup.
The recipe suggested to add a quarter of the weight of the sweet potato in sugar. Our one kumara weighed 160 grams so we took 50 grams of sugar and mixed it with 100ml of water and a good dash of vanilla extract. We were making corn chowder for dinner at the same time so with the kumara and the chowder going on the stove, we decided to do the sugar syrup in the microwave. We did for thirty second blasts, stirring it each time until the sugar had all melted.
Once the kumara was soft we added the sugar syrup and blitzed it smooth with the stick blender. It was still on the heat and we kept stirring it until it was quite thick. This did not take a long at all. We then stirred in about half a teaspoon of ground cinnamon We tipped it into a shallow dish and let it set while we enjoyed the chowder and home made bread.
We served up the dulce de batata for pudding, serving it with some natural sweetened yoghurt. It was really nice. The texture is a cross between quince paste and well mashed potato. It was deliciously sweet and we would definitely make it again.
It is supposed to go well with cheese and chocolate, so methinks some more experimenting to come!
Posted by: edibleplanet | May 4, 2010
Dulce de Batata – Kumara paste
Posted in Cooking, interesting uses for ingredients, Trying out new food | Tags: dessert, dulce de batata, kumara, Latin American food, Sweet potato paste
Buy local, Eat global 
Sounds pretty cool. Any reason not to just boil the kumara? How long to steam?
By: Gavin on May 5, 2010
at 12:14 am
Possibly no reason at all. I just thought I would do it how the recipe said to start with. I only did one kumara so to steam about 5-10minutes.
By: edibleplanet on May 5, 2010
at 3:54 am
BTW my wife says this is a traditional Maori dish if you use honey rather than sugar.
By: Gavin on May 6, 2010
at 12:31 am
That is very cool to know. What is the Maori name for it? I’ll see if google knows 🙂
By: edibleplanet on May 13, 2010
at 11:02 pm
My wife does not know, sorry, but she saw the recipe in an old Maori Women’s Welfare League recipe book – which is lost in the mists of time.
By: Gavin on May 17, 2010
at 8:34 pm
damn – google didn’t know either 😦
By: edibleplanet on May 26, 2010
at 6:02 am
2004 my brother Michael, a Parks and Wildlife Ranger in Victoria, Australia, had the opportunity to go to Argentina to work for a short time with some Argentinian equivalents he had met the previous year at an international Rangers conference, held in Australia at Wilson’s Promentory. He came back absolutely enthused with their style of cooking, and in particular, the way they cook their sheep on an Asado spit. This is a crucifix type contraption that the sheep is gutted up the middle, opened out and tied to the crucifix. It is rubbed all over with oil and herbs, and slowly cooked for 4-5 hours,depending on the size of the sheep. My sister Sheila who is a chef, was equally enthused with this information, so Michael made her the said crucifix and we had an Asado spit with all the appropriate trimmings. My task was to make the sweets, Alfajores with Dulce de Batata and Dulce de Leche; basically an almond shortbread biscuit spread with Dulce de Batata and caramelised sweetened condensed milk. Low calories it is not, but extremely delicious and decadent. Definitely worth a try.
By: Carole Ryan on October 24, 2012
at 9:09 am