Benne Wafers - Central African Republic

The Central African Republic cuisine has overarching similarities with food from the rest of the continent. Lots of cassava, okra, stews, palm oil, peanuts and beans, while some dishes do include game, chicken, goat and fish – is some areas of the country meat can be quite scarce, and as such some insects are also consumed. However, while I was researching what to cook I was hit by a craving for something sweet so I decided to look up desserts and one of the first things that came up was benne wafers – thing sesame crackers of sort which looked super tasty and coincidentally earlier this week I’d been staring at a small bag of sesame seeds that were in my pantry and wondering what to do with them. I was set on cooking these golden crackers.

I started looking for recipes and most of the blogs I found credited South Carolina in the US with the creation of benne wafers. However, some did reference that sesame and in fact the wafers had been brought over to the US by African Slaves during colonial times. Throughout my blog I have mentioned colonial times a lot – but mostly by acknowledging how being colonised affected the cuisine of different African countries as well as other colonies, with the introduction of techniques and ingredients that wouldn’t have been present in these countries before they were colonised. Most of these countries have taken imported techniques and ingredients and made them their own. For example, Portuguese custard tarts have been reinvented in some African and Asian countries. So today is an exciting opportunity to explore how this has worked the other way around, African slaves took sesame seeds (benne) to the US and sesame seeds are also referred to this way across the Middle East – so despite South Carolina claiming the wafers neither the name nor the key ingredient actually originates in the US. While some of the other blogs have referenced the true origin of the wafer, I think it’s important to be up front about its true origin which lies in Africa, they are truly delicious and very simple! I used this recipe here!

Makes about 20

Ingredients

• 1 cup sesame seeds

• 3/4 cup butter, melted

• 1 1/2 cups brown sugar, packed

• 1 egg

• 1 tsp vanilla extract

• 1 cup all-purpose flour

• 1/4 tsp salt

• 1/4 tsp baking powder

Method

1. Pre-heat your oven to 375F/190C

2. In a small frying pan over medium-high heat toss the sesame seeds until they turn a slight golden brown. Don't take your eyes off them as they can burn easily!

3. Line two baking trays with parchment paper.

4. Mix all of the ingredients together until they form a smooth dough or paste.

5. Place small heaps of dough (around 1.5tsp) onto the baking sheet. Make sure they are quite far apart as they will spread a lot! I did 5-6 on each tray.

6. Bake for 5-6 minutes and then remove from the oven. Allow them to cool on the baking sheet for about 10 minutes before transferring to a cooling rack. You will need to bake these in batches.

7. Store in an airtight container and enjoy!