Following on from last week’s pholourie recipe, here’s another of my favourite fried foods that hails from Trinidad – fried bakes (or fry-bake, if you’re a proper Trini!). ‘Fried bakes’ – a contradiction in terms!
My aunt sent me a recipe that she cut out of the TT Guardian – complete with a few of her personalisation notes!
It’s a very quick and simple recipe; a basic dough of flour, raising agent, fat and liquid – but the end product… wow!
Fried bakes are traditionally eaten with fried fish (the famous bake & shark eaten al fresco at the beach) or buljol, a spicy salted fish dish.
Here is a video of my aunt making fried bakes recently. This is what she advocates:
I decided that tapping the dough down into the oil, whilst turning it but by bit, results in it puffing up immediately.
As a vegetarian, I thought about what best to stuff them with. In the past, I’ve had them with extra mature cheddar, Branston pickle and salad. Perhaps smashed avocado or hummus with grated carrot. Instead, I went a step up and decided on fried bakes with grilled halloumi, salad and hot sauce.
Click here to save the recipe to Pinterest


- 260g/9oz plain flour
- 8g/¼oz butter/shortening
- 2 tsp baking powder
- ½tsp salt
- ½tsp brown sugar
- 190ml/6 fl oz water
- vegetable oil for frying
- In a large mixing bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, salt and brown sugar
- Rub in the butter/shortening until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs
- Add enough water to just about make a soft dough
- Flour your work surface and knead for about 5 minutes
- Cover the bowl with a tea towel and rest the dough for 30 minutes
- Divide the dough into 2 equal pieces and then divide each into 6 equal pieces (getting 12 in total). Or, weigh the entire ball of dough and divide into 12 equal weights; mine were about 40g/1⅖oz each
- Rest the dough again for a further 5 minutes before rolling each piece into rounds about 7cm / 3" in diameter
- In a heavy-bottomed, deep frying pan or saucepan, heat the vegetable oil and fry each bake making sure that it's covered in oil (my aunt recommends spooning oil over the top of the bake as it cooks, to help it puff up)
- Carefully flip and fry the other side until fully ballooned or puffed
- Remove and drain on kitchen paper to remove excess oil
- Slice in half horizontally and load with your chosen filling