It's a yeast bread. Got the recipe on a South African black powder forum. Here is the recipe, courtesy of my friend Robert:
Bill if I may steer you right, DON"T go for the baking powder route they come out quite different and make your tongue feel wooly. For me..... instant indigestion.
Try this:
1.2 kilo cake flour 1 satchet instant dried yeast
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar
Dissolve yeast in a half cup of warm water and stir in the sugar and let stand till frothy. Mix a pile of the flour and salt and hollow it in the middle pour in the yeast sugar mixture and start to mix the in the flour keep adding lukewarm water until you have a nice firm dough. Knead well until soft and smooth. Allow to rise covered in a warm spot.
Knead down the dough when risen to twice its size and make into fist sized balls.
Dust a wooden board with flour and flatten each ball until about a centimeter thick. Cover and allow to rise.
Whe risen, carefully lift and drop into hot oil (190 deg C) and fry until golden brown, may need to be tipped over so top and bottom are cooked to same colour. Lift vetkoek out with slotted spoon and drain onto paper towels.
The vetkoek should be slightly crisp on the outside and not oily inside. If oily inside the cooking oil was not hot enough.
Slice almost through and serve warm with favourite curry stuffed inside, or savoury mince, or real butter and apricot jam. In fact almost anything goes well with vetkoek.
The Boers used sheep fat from fat tailed sheep and rendered it down to fry vetkoek, and some families use only rendered beef fat.
They taste quite different when fried in vegetable oil. ( Nope Your cardiologist will shudder at animal fat for frying)
Enjoy!