Benne Cakes
Overview
Benne is the Wolof and Bambara word for sesame, and it is the word that carries this dish's history. Sesame was cultivated across West Africa long before the Atlantic slave trade, and enslaved West Africans carried the seed and the word with them to the Americas, where both survived. Benne cakes as they exist today are most strongly associated with the Gullah Geechee communities of the South Carolina and Georgia Lowcountry, where the seed was planted, the name was kept, and the thin crisp sesame wafer became a regional speciality that Charleston still sells. That makes them a diaspora food rather than a West African one: African in origin, African in name, and developed into their current form on the other side of the ocean. The association with good luck travelled too, and it is the reason benne cakes appear at Kwanzaa, the African American celebration established in 1966, where they are served as a snack before the meal. The source for this recipe places them in West Africa and gives Ghana, Nigeria and Togo as the cuisine, which is where the seed and the word come from rather than where this particular cookie was developed. Both halves of that story are true and neither is complete on its own.
AFN Heritage Note
Benne is the Wolof and Bambara word for sesame, a crop long cultivated in West Africa, and the word and the seed were carried to the Americas by enslaved West Africans. Benne cakes are documented as a speciality of the Gullah Geechee communities of the South Carolina and Georgia Lowcountry, where sesame is associated with good luck.
Ingredients
Dietary tags are provided by contributors as a guide, not verified by AFN, and they depend on the products you buy. If you have a serious allergy, check every ingredient yourself. Cooking, allergies and your own judgement
Directions
- 1
Preheat the oven to 163°C.
- 2
Lightly oil a baking sheet, or line it with parchment paper.
- 3
Mix the brown sugar and butter together and beat until creamy.
- 4
Stir in the beaten egg, vanilla extract and lemon juice.
- 5
Add the flour, baking powder, salt and toasted sesame seeds and combine.
- 6
Drop by rounded teaspoons onto the baking sheet, 2 inches apart.
- 7
Bake for 15 minutes, or until the edges are browned.
- 8
Cool on a wire rack before serving.
Africook’s Notes
Personal notes from Beatrice Ige- Toast the sesame seeds first in a dry pan over medium heat until they just colour. This is where the flavour comes from and untoasted seeds give a flat, pale cookie.
- Watch the seeds closely while toasting. They go from golden to burnt in seconds and burnt sesame is bitter throughout.
- Space them two inches apart. These are drop cookies and they spread considerably, so a crowded sheet gives you one large sheet of cookie.
- Soften the butter properly first, which takes about an hour out of the fridge. Cold butter will not cream with the sugar.
- Cool them on a rack rather than the hot sheet. They firm up as they cool and left on the tray they overbake.
Reviews
3 reviews
My grandmother back in Accra used to make something so similar with sesame, herh the nuttiness! Living in Columbus now I had to go to the Saraga international market on Morse Rd to get a proper big bag of sesame seeds. Toasting them in the pan first made the whole kitchen smell amazing paa. I added a tiny bit extra lemon juice to cut the brown sugar sweetness, turned out perfect oo.
Had to pop down to Waitrose to find toasted sesame seeds for this recipe. Tasted lovely and nutty but mine spread out completely on the baking paper and stuck together into one giant biscuit! Took about 20 mins in my fan oven to get crisp rather than 15. Will try chilling the butter mixture first next time.
Picked up a giant tub of sesame seeds from the local South Asian grocer just for these. You definitely need to keep an eye on them in the oven around the 12 minute mark as the brown sugar edges scorch quickly! The splash of lemon juice is brilliant though, gives a lovely subtle bite to the crunch.