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In this article, you’ll be educated on African desserts. Have you ever wondered what African desserts are? We come across them regularly but pay little attention to them.

Firstly, what is a dessert? Dessert is a word coined from the French word “desservir” which means “to clear the table” in literal terms, “concluding meal” or “the meal after the main meal”.

Desserts are delicious and sweet foods usually confections, wines, chocolates that are used to conclude the course of a meal.  During a standard course of a meal, the appetizer is served before the arrival of the main meal and then comes the dessert.

It is usually said that “Any meal without a dessert is merely a snack” and “your dessert has the ability to make or break your meal.”

Why are Desserts Served Last?

Usually, desserts have a relatively high amount of sugar and fats which make them have a higher calorie count per gram than other foods. Some will ask if this is healthy. It is entirely healthy in all ramifications owing to the fact desserts help lock up your hunger and craving to have another meal. Having spoken about this, let’s talk more about the health benefits of a dessert.

• This would sound funny but Desserts can make you happier. Yes, that’s right, DESSERTS CAN MAKE YOU HAPPIER. Now, giggle a little, and let’s get down to business. According to The Nest, desserts have been found to have a high amount of carbohydrates (sugar) which stimulates the production of serotonin (a neurotransmitter responsible for the regulation of sleep, mood, and appetite) and this contributes healthily to the state of general health and emotional well-being of an individual. Indulging in your favorite dessert alters your mind and body in positive ways.
• Take full advantage of this scientific process by allowing yourself to enjoy your favorite sweet treat without that extra side of guilt. You really are doing something good for your body!

• Eating desserts is known to help you lose weight. You would ask, “I thought we gain weight by eating”. You’re right if you ask this, but you’re also wrong. Irrespective of the fact foods make us gain weight, healthy foods and a healthy feeding habit keep us on the right track and shape. However, studies have shown that adults who indulge in dessert but eat an otherwise nutritious diet have a greater chance of producing long-term success in weight loss.
• This is true because the body will respond to small amounts of desserts that satisfy cravings by satiating its own appetite for them. Choosing to stop consuming sweets altogether in the hopes of achieving a weight loss goal will almost always lead to binge eating and overconsumption when you finally do indulge. Balancing your indulgences with healthier eating and regular exercise is more likely to lead to diet success than completely eliminating them.

• Desserts also make up for the dietary insufficiencies over the course of your meal. This is quite self-explanatory owing to the fact no meal has the “perfect” proportion of nutritional requirements, so desserts help pad up and make up for the shortcomings of the main meal.

African Desserts You Would Absolutely Love

Probably when dessert is mentioned, your mind gets wrapped around cakes, chocolates, and other intercontinental desserts but think again, this article is focused on African desserts and yes, Africans have a lot of deliciously made desserts that will blow your mind.

Africa is a diverse continent so I’ll pick out a few desserts per region so as to give you a variety of African dessert recipes. Let’s dive right in.

Here are a few crowd favorite desserts from the West African region;

Puff-Puff

The first African dessert that comes to the mind of an African man or woman is Puff-Puff. It is usually eaten casually as a snack without paying attention to the type of meal it is. Often used as small chops on occasions, sometimes being snacked on, this is a delicious well rounded fresh pepper snack wrapped around in the flour and fried in vegetable oil.

Tempted to try it yeah? Here are the ingredients needed for a delicious puff-puff tryout; 3 cups of flour, 1 cup of granulated sugar but normally we add to taste, 4 tsp of yeast, Grounded pepper (add to taste), A pinch of salt, Sprinkle of nutmeg, Vegetable oil for frying and make sure the oil is enough to make the puffballs float and also use a deep fryer.

Surprisingly none of these ingredients are far from any local market. Here is a step-by-step walk-through of how to fry it, so you have no excuse to try it out.

• Sift the flour to get rid of any unwanted particles and to loosen it.
• Mix all the dry ingredients with a spatula including the fresh pepper.

• Gradually add warm water to the mixture with the flour.

• Place your mixture in the warm dry place and cover for about 45minutes. Within this time, the yeast is supposed to make the mixture rise. If it doesn’t rise, you’ve got the wrong yeast.
• Pour your vegetable oil into a pan with medium heat. Allow the oil to boil moderately.
• Now scoop your mixture gradually with a tablespoon to give it a perfectly round shape. This shape takes a lot of tries to work for novices but over time, you’ll get a hang of it. Also, fry in small batches to avoid clustering of puffballs because they don’t look attractive when that happens.

• Turn each ball when the under turns brown to achieve the equal coloring of each ball. As said earlier, Make sure the oil is enough to engulf the puffball.
• Finally, serve and enjoy your dessert. Make sure you leave a comment on your first puff puff fry try.

Check out the full recipe of this African dessert: PUFF-PUFF

Chin-Chin

This is a very popular crunchy snack that is majorly eaten as a dessert because it gives this easy, comfortable, and effortless chewing experience. This African dessert is made from well-kneaded dough that is flavored with butter, milk, and eggs. Chin-chin is either deep-fried or oven-baked and the size or shape is generally based on individual preference but it’s traditionally cut into cute square crumbs. They look yummy but taste yummier.

This is most times eaten as a snack but that does not take away how delicious it can get. Without much ado, here is a walk-through on the ingredients needed, how to prepare it, and ways to enjoy it.

Firstly the ingredients needed to get this dessert for a table of 4 are; tin milk preferably liquid milk, 8 cups of flour, 250g of margarine, half cup of granulated sugar, 2 tsp of nutmeg or cinnamon, 2 eggs to make the chin-chin richer and softer, warm water and lastly vegetable oil for frying. As usual, the ingredients are a stone throw away from you. Let’s get down to how it’s prepared.

• Sift the flour into a bowl.
• Add the granulated sugar and ground nutmeg

• Scoop the margarine gradually into the flour and mix till you feel little crumbs because the crumbs can’t be fully eliminated.

• If you’re using egg, this is the perfect time to mix it with the contents of the bowl.
• Add your liquid milk and mix it with your spatula. Then knead by hand till dough is formed. It may feel dry and you’ll be tempted to add more water but it’s in your best interest to resist that urge because the liquid in the bowl would be enough the only exception being when you can’t get to make the dough.
• When done, cover the dough and leave it to rest for about 15 minutes.

• Roll out small bits of dough and cut with a knife or a pizza cutter to achieve a square shape. Do not use flour to dust Nigerian Chin Chin because this causes the oil to foam during frying. If you mix the Chin Chin very well, there will be no need for dusting while cutting the chin-chin.
• Pour a generous quantity of vegetable oil into a deep pot and set your stove to high heat. Chin-Chin fries best on high heat.

• As the oil heats up, test the temperature with one piece of raw chin-chin. If the oil is hot enough, the piece of chin-chin should sizzle and come up to the surface almost immediately.
• Once you confirm that the oil is hot enough, gently collect some chin-chin from the side of the mound of diced raw chin-chin with both hands and throw it into the hot oil. Do not overcrowd them.
• Start stirring immediately with a metallic spoon, shaking the spoon from side to side till all the pieces of chin-chin come apart.

• After that, keep stirring at intervals till the chin-chin browns to your liking. Remember, the chin-chin will go one shade darker when you take them off the oil.
• When happy, scoop into a sieve lined with a paper towel. Then fry the rest of the diced raw chin-chin in batches.
• After some time, spread them on a cold hard surface lined with newspapers and paper towels so they can cool down completely.

• When completely cool, store in airtight containers. Place it on your kitchen counter, in the fridge, or in the freezer.

When next it’s dessert time, do well to keep a delicious jar of chin-chin on your table. It could sure be your family’s favorite.

Donkwa (Tanfiri)

Moving over to the third African dessert on the list, Tanfiri or Donkwa (dodonkwa) is a savory Nigerian snack made with cornmeal and groundnuts(peanuts). It’s one of those snacks that does not require cooking. It has a similar taste and texture to Kuli-Kuli.  It melts gently when put in the mouth. If you’ve never had a taste of this, you need it.

Like all desserts, it has high sugar content owing to the fact it’s a product of corn (actually roasted corn).

The ingredients needed to make a 4 person serving are 250 grams of roasted cornmeal, 70 grams of groundnut/ peanut or groundnut powder, 1 tsp of sugar, 2 tsp of groundnut oil though canola oil can be used, 2 tsp of water (you wouldn’t need to add much water) and finally to give it a typical donkwa taste, you’ll add about 2 pinches of pepper.

Looking at the ingredients, it meets the criteria for a dessert, high carbohydrate or sugar content, healthy oil content, and other nutritional content. Here’s a walk-through on how to create this masterpiece. It’s pretty straightforward.

• To prepare your delicious donkwa, Sieve the corn powder to remove lumps, chaffs or other impurities.
• Pour the cornmeal, groundnuts, sugar, ground chili powder, and ground clove into a blender.
• Grind until all the ingredients are well combined to form a smooth fine powder.
• Transfer the fine powder into a large bowl. Add drops of water and oil gradually, mix well and mold into balls (using your hands, miniature jelly or cake molds). Don’t add too much water or oil so that it doesn’t look soaked or sodden.
• The Yoruba-style tanfiri can be prepared without water but the combination of a little water and oil gives the perfect paste. You can serve your favorite savory snack with some crunchy peanut butter.

Enjoy your Donkwa, feel its abundant rich taste.

Nkatie Cake

One West African dessert you would definitely love to try out is the Nkatie cake. This is an African dessert originally from Ghana but a good dish will be appreciated in any part of the world, that’s the main reason the Nkatie cake is widespread amongst West African countries now.

It looks attractive as you can see in the picture above, it is shaped like a candy bar or sometimes it is cracker shaped but looks are not deceiving when it comes to this dessert, judging from the 4.2/5.0 star review it got.

Like every other dessert, it has a considerably high amount of sugar and oils basically that’s all the ingredients in it. Don’t get to laugh when you hear it has only three ingredients which are groundnut or peanuts, sugar, and salt. Shocked? So how is it prepared?

• Crush the roasted groundnut into tiny bits preferably with a roller over a chopping board; do not grind it to very fine pieces but tiny chewable bits.
• Pour the sugar into a dry frying pan and heat with medium heat till the sugar melts and turns golden. Stir the sugar to avoid the edges burning and also try hard not to get your hands burnt too.

• Add the crushed groundnuts or peanuts, to the sugar and keep stirring.

• Make sure every groundnut piece has a touch of sugar on it. When every groundnut has a touch of sugar, pull the frying pan out of the heat source.
• Advice for first-time tryouts: do not leave the meal in the heat source more than a minute after adding the groundnut.
• Pour the hot sugarcoated groundnut pieces onto a work surface, and with a rolling pin, stack them in piles as thick as you like, you have a yummy mental picture right now?
• With a pizza cutter, cut the hot dessert into shapes you admire and allow to cool for 2-10 minutes.

You’ll definitely find what you prepared worth the effort, now dig in and enjoy. You deserve it.

Melktert or Milk Tart

Away to a South African dessert to savor about. Melktert is an African dessert consisting of a sweet pastry crust containing a custard filling made from milk, flour, sugar, and eggs. The ratio of milk to eggs is higher than in a traditional Portuguese custard tart or Chinese egg tart, resulting in a lighter texture and a stronger milk flavor.

This is usually termed, “a complete dessert ”. The name is gotten from a pidgin version of milk tart; it doesn’t take much to whip up this delicious tart dessert mainly because all the ingredients can be gotten from your pantry.

A little reminiscent of custard pie but more delicate, with a lighter texture and a strong milk presence. Don’t wait for this pie to firm up it just doesn’t, more of a pudding with a crust.  It is made with a sweet pastry crust often referred to as Pate Sablée, the good thing about this pastry is that you do not have to worry about rolling it out all you do is press the crust into the pie pan freeze for 30 minutes and then bake without weight. Freezing prevents the pie from rising.

As promised, the ingredients can be gotten from your pantry and they are; flour (cake or all-purpose flour), egg yolk, cold butter is preferably used, icing sugar or powdered sugar, milk (it is important to use whole milk or full-fat milk for this recipe), cream it could be heavy cream depending on the consumer, almond extracts, cinnamon extract, cornstarch, nutmeg, cinnamon, and ice water.

You’re probably scared with the long shopping list of ingredients but the end product is worth every second you spend.

Over to its preparation; it is a very delicate meal to prepare so pay close attention to the details.

Let’s go;

The crust:

The crust recipe often used does not require any rolling out. You simply press the dough into the pie plate before freezing and then blind baking until golden brown and crisp. You can substitute with a cookie crust or use any pie dough recipe you like.

The filling:

•  As with all custards, milk tart filling starts with milk (use whole/full-fat milk), cream, and flavorings being heated together. To thicken and set the filling, it is preferable you use a combination of egg yolks, cornstarch, and flour.
• Whisk the flour and egg yolks with the sugar then ladle in some of the hot milk mixtures and whisk to temper the eggs.
• Pour the mixture back into the saucepan and cook whilst whisking until the custard is thick, smooth, and cooked through. I like to pass the custard through a fine-mesh sieve to make sure there are no lumps or bits of coagulated egg. Beat room temperature butter into the custard (this adds extra silky richness to the finished tart) and pour the custard into the baked crust.
• Setting: Smooth the top of the tart out by spraying a piece of parchment paper with cooking spray and pressing it onto the surface of the custard. This allows you to smoothen the top but also prevents skin from forming. Place the tart in the fridge and allow it to sit for at least 4 hours but overnight is even better.

Serving:

Once you are ready to serve this delicious African dessert, dust the top of the tart with a generous amount of cinnamon then slice and serve.

Check out the full recipe on our website: Melktert Full Recipe

Now you’ve gathered this knowledge about African desserts, make sure you try some. When next you’re on a dinner date, don’t overlook the dessert part of the menu, it’s worth every dime you pay.

When preparing a meal for the family, friends, colleagues make sure you integrate a dessert plan for them. After all, we all want people around us to stay healthy because health is wealth. Hope you enjoyed reading; ensure to tell us the recipe you tried out. Until next time, stay safe!

Also, check out these African Dessert recipes:

• Melktart (South African Milk Tart)
• Milo Cake
• Twisted Doughnuts
• Thiakry Couscous