AFRICAN recipes please.....................

[collision]

Our theme for our Summer Fete this year is Out of Africa and so we thought we could make some african themed food.

this can, of course, include south Africa so please could you give me some ideas of EASY cake recipes or biscuits etc we could make and sell.

TIA

bump

Jollof rice? Staple dish in West Africa. Loads of variations of it - look online and pick one? It can be made vegetarian or with meat and is easy to pre-prepare and then warm through and serve in little containers. Yum.

Oh, didn't realise it was sweet stuff. North African idea very good@hanaflower. V

fried locusts. I have an African friend who can't understand why I go 'bleurgh'

I suppose it doesnt have to be sweet stuff but I thought it would be easier to bake in advance and sell.

I have found some nice biscuits and a banana bread cake which sound good.

Just worried about health and safety issues as usual.

Looking back on my childhood in Africa, I can't remember any specifically African cakes/biscuits tbh, we just had the usual English cakes/biscuits. All that springs to mind are chicken with rice and peanuts, or vegetable stews. So not much help to you!

I think I would decorate the cakes to match the African theme. You could make a tiger cake which is just orange mixture and chocolate mixture swirled into tins together so when it's cut the cake looks striped, and you ice it with butter icing coloured orange. Biscuits you could cut out into elephants, etc if you're good at that or have zoo animal cutters.

Cup cakes could be iced in white and brown to make zebra cakes. You could also make a big square cake in a baking tin, ice it green or something and put marzipan shapes on it to make an African themed picture. That's all I can think of though.

great ideas! Thanks.

what is giraffe decoration?

Hi Collision, i'm from S africa and will try and think of a few sweet recipes, here is one to start.

Milktart

Base
Cream together: 125ml sugar
250ml butter/margarine
Add: 1 egg
Sift and add: 500ml Flour
10ml Baking powder
pinch of salt
Stick dough in the frigde for a while.
Press dough into round backing tin and bake in pre-heated oven (180°C/350°F) until cooked.

I usaully just buy the ready made tart cases at Tesco since the base is not very easy to bake as it usually rises while baking. The base is also the bit that takes the longes so buying the bases saves a lot of time.

Filling:
Boil: 1,125ml milk
40ml Butter/Margarine
Beat and add: 187,5ml sugar
3 eggs
35ml Flour
35ml Cornflour
Flavouring
(Almond/Vanilla/Lemon)
Salt
Stir continually to insure that you have no bits.
Boil over low heat until the mixture has thickened.
Pour into bases while the mixture is still hot
Sprinkle with Cinnamon.
Place in Fridge overnight until cold.

Hope this is the kind of recipe you are looking for, will look up a few more and post.

Traditional SA biscuits

Sweet biscuits

250g butter
3cups sugar
5 eggs
6cups flour
30ml baking powder
10ml nutmeg
2ml salt

Mix butter, sugar and eggs well. sift flour, baking powder, nutmeg and salt. add to butter mix. Let it stand for 30min.

Roll dough out and use cookie cutters to cut out biscuits.
take 1 egg and mix it with 25ml milk. brush lightly over biscuit and sprinkle some sugar over biscuit.

Bake for 8-10 minutes at 200degrees celcius

Koeksisters

The secret of the crisp syrupy outside of koeksisters is that they are taken straight from hot oil and dipped into ice-cold syrup. This seals the syrup outside and leaves the inside dryish in contrast.

To make the syrup, mix a liter of sugar, 5 ml cream of tartar, 2.5 ml tartaric acid and 5 ml vanilla essence or grated orange rind or cinnamon, or 1.5 ml ginger with 500 ml of water. Bring mixture to the boil and allow it to simmer for about 10 minutes or until syrupy. Set syrup aside to cool. It is advisable to make the syrup first and leave it overnight in the fridge.

To make the batter, sift 500 ml flour, 10 ml baking powder and 5 ml salt into a mixing bowl. Cut or rub 70 ml of margarine or butter into the dry ingredients. Beat an egg thoroughly and add it to 80 ml of milk. Add the egg and milk to the flour mixture, handling as little as possible. Put the dough in the fridge for at least one hour. Roll out the dough to a thickness of 4 mm. Cut into strips about 8 cm long and 2.5 cm wide. Cut each strip into three lengthwise, leaving one side uncut. Now plait the three pieces and press ends together firmly.

Pre-heat a deep pan and remove syrup from the fridge. The hot fried koeksisters must be dropped into the cold syrup. The syrup will warm up about halfway through, so divide the syrup into two bowls. Deep-fry koeksisters until golden brown, drain for a few seconds on absorbent paper and dip into cold syrup.

No ideas of my own but just wanted to say that South African milk tart is FAB. An ex-colleague used to make it for us and basically it's like English custard tart but much more solid - it's really, really nice; far nicer than I'm making it sound!

I have to agree with janeite, Milktart is VERY VERY NICE and always a winner. I made the recipe that I posted yesterday for christmas, to be honest I made 4 and they were gone within 5 mins.