How to Make Buñuelos Mexicanos with Flour Tortillas

Learn how to make buñuelos Mexicanos with flour tortillas in minutes. You can even transform them into edible ornaments for kids!

My kids love making these cute little buñuelos with tortillas for Day of the Dead. We punch holes in a few to add to our árbol de la vida and share the rest with friends and family as we share decorate our altar, play music, and reminisce about our dearly departed. The best part about this recipe, is that it can be adapted to any holiday – all you need is a festive cookie cutter. If I want my buñuelos to look a little more traditional, I’ll fry the tortillas whole.

INGREDIENTS YOU’LL NEED

Flour tortillas are the star ingredient in this recipe. With a few simple tweaks, we are able to create a little something for the adults, and a fun edible craft for the kids. All you need is a pack of flour tortillas, cinnamon, and sugar. Sometimes I like to use the raw flour tortillas from Costco, but regular flour tortillas also work and are much easier to find.

Traditional buñuelos Mexicanos are made with a flour dough that is stretched until it is paper thin before it is laid to rest, and then fried. They are somewhat labor intensive, which is why I made this easy version that is approachable even for novice cooks.

For Day of the Dead, calaveras de azúcar represent the friendly faces of the spirits being remembered. In pre-Columbian times, Aztecs used amaranth seeds instead of sugar to make the skulls. Nowadays, people make them out of sugar, chocolate, paper, wood, or any other material.

STEP-BY-STEP INSTRUCTIONS

1. Prepare ingredients

• You can leave a few tortilla whole if you’ll be making full-sized, round buñuelos. 
• If you are making ornaments, use your cookie cutter to cut as many sugar skulls out of each tortilla as you can. With the end of the straw, cut out two circles for the eyes. Using a knife, create an upside-down heart for the nose and a thin rectangle for the mouth. Be sure to make a hole at the top of each sugar skull if you’ll be hanging them as ornaments. This is where you’ll thread the twine.

2. Make cinnamon-sugar mixture

• In a shallow dish or plate, mix sugar and cinnamon and set aside. 
• Line baking trays with paper towels and set aside.

3. Fry and tortillas and coat with sugar

• Heat oil on medium-high flame in frying pan. Allow to get hot – tortilla should sizzles when placed in oil. When frying whole tortillas, start frying one at a time until golden and crispy, approximately 15 seconds on each side. 
• Drain excess oil back into frying pan and immediately move the tortilla over the sugar-cinnamon mixture and coat both sides of the tortilla with it. You may need to spoon it onto the tortilla to cover well. Shake off excess sugar and gently place onto lined baking sheet. 
• Continue the process until you have fried all of the tortillas. 
• If making the ornaments, these will fry much quicker because they are smaller, so be sure not to burn them. They should only require about five seconds of frying time on each side.

4. Enjoy

• Enjoy warm or thread baker’s twine through the top hole to display as ornaments!

If you’d like to make more Day of the Dead desserts, be sure to check out my flan de calabaza, Mexican chocolate ice cream, calabazas dulces, and camote enmielado!

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This recipe was originally published on October 27, 2020 and updated with step-by-step instructions and images on October 7, 2025.

Lola’s Cocina is a small business that earns various revenue streams. This includes sponsored posts and affiliate commissions from linked products, which I use and love, with no extra cost to readers. This income helps sustain the site.

Photography and Styling: Cacey McReavy