Benin

The country where voodoo is the official religion. From movies and books, we have an idea of this religion, that it is associated with black wizards and is a means of revenge, but in fact we don’t understand in mass what it is.

In several countries in West Africa and America, a large group of people are voodoo followers, and the city of Ouida is the spiritual birthplace of vodun, as Benin religion is known. Every year, from January 3 to 10, many followers gather in Ouida to participate in the festival. Then many ceremonies and rituals take place and dances swirl.

Voodoo priests obtain materials such as dried snake heads, wooden figures, organs of various animals, horns, and hooves from Fetish markets that are common in West Africa. I have seen a similar market in Bolivia, where they sell dried llama stillbirths that are used in rituals for grace.

In the fifteenth century, Portuguese slavers entered the Benin coast, joined by Dutch, French and English in the seventeenth century. The territory is named “Robski bryag” and in the middle of the seventeenth century a feudal state of Dahomey emerged in the central parts of the country. In the mid-19th century, Dahomey began to lose his status as a regional power and in 1892-1894 the French managed to conquer it and declared Dahomey a colony of France. In 1904, in the history of present-day Banin, it is remembered that the country is part of French West Africa. In 1958 it gained autonomy as the Republic of Dahomey, and on August 1, 1960, it gained complete independence under the name of the Republic of Dahomey.

Benin is an agricultural and economically backward country. Its economy is developing and 70% of the population is employed in agriculture. The main crops grown are cotton, oil palm, coconut palm and tobacco. Benin’s national dish is called “fufu” and is a sweet potato porridge. It tastes similar to hominy, but it is more dense. In pure form, fufu is hard so it is watered with sauces. Their proverb says, “Whoever has soup will not eat fufu.” But the soup is nowhere to be found and yet fufu has to eat. The yam itself is a relative of the potatoes, the fruits are huge and can often be seen piling up on the logs on the logs.

They also have soft goat cheese in their kitchen. They cut it into irregularly shaped pieces and fry it in sauce until crust forms. All Benin foods are very spicy because of the different sauces. Other African dishes typical of the country are rice, pasta, broccoli and more. The fruits are very cheap and the mango and bananas are free. There are plenty of pineapples everywhere. You can also find grapes that are sold submerged in cold water before they sell it to you, but it is rather exotic and quite expensive. In Benin, they only have instant coffee, which they mix with condensed milk, but they do not drink it but dip bread in it. For cooling they use water diluted with lemon juice (lemonade).

And one interesting fact – in Cotonou (Benin economic capital) there is a square called “Bulgaria”, in the center of which is erected a large statue of Georgi Dimitrov. The five-tone figure of a leader of the Bulgarian proletariat is a gift to Benin from Bulgaria sometime in the 1980s. There is a bank office opposite her and Benin jokes that this financial institution is constantly in crisis because Dimitrov invariably reaches out to her and collects hers profits. 🙂

As a poor African country, it’s no wonder Benin has no cakes. I have already gotten used to the fact that when Africa comes to the horizon, the search for a sweets for the blog becomes difficult. What I did was make something like a cake of two typical Benin desserts – Massa and bananas in orange sauce. “Massa” is a type of pancake made from fermented rice or a combination of rice and millet flour. The recipe for them was brought to Benin by immigrants from the Sahel (Nigeria region). For the pancake stuffing, I used a recipe from the blog that inspired me to begin this Global Table Adventure Cake Journey. I did not expect these pancakes to be so difficult to fry and shape, so I hope you will excuse me for having the improper shape of my makeshift cake. Finally, the taste turned out to be important, which was surprisingly great.

For “Massa” I used the following products:

450 grams of millet flour

puree of 1 ripe banana

1/4 tea cup rice

1½ tea cup sugar

oil for frying

Steps of preparation:

Mixed millet flour with water until you can form a ball from the mixture. Leave the dough wrapped in foil for fresh storage in the refrigerator for 8 hours. Then add water to the blender to make one idea thicker than a standard pancake mix. Cook the rice well, strain it and mix it to a creamy mixture in the blender with the mixture of millet and water. Leave it on for about 15 minutes. Finally, add the sugar and the puree of banana and mix until smooth. Add more water to make the mixture as thick as ordinary pancakes. Fry in pan as usual when making pancakes. It is a little difficult to turn, because the sugar in the dough makes the pancakes caramelize, but with two spatulas they still turn. 🙂

When you are done with improvised cakes, it’s time to prepare the dessert stuffing:

2 bananas

1/2 tea cup of orange juice

1/2 tea  cup brown sugar

1 tablespoon lemon juice

Combine the orange, lemon juice and sugar in a small saucepan and simmer on the stove for about 15 minutes at medium temperature. It should not boil, only the mixture makes small bubbles. Add the sliced bananas in a few minutes.

I assembled the cake by alternating pancakes and banana mix and syrup until the quantities finished. Finally, for the sake of luxury, I put some caramel ice cream on top and tried the treat while it was warm. And since they are now so-called. “hot days” I decided to add a banana shake with almond milk and ice cream to the afternoon sweet bliss. It became a great combination. I very love bananas . Their taste was dominant in every component of the Benin adventure.

I know that what I prepared is not cake in the sense we understand it, but for some of the countries I write about, classic cakes simply do not exist in their households. And I don’t want to miss a single corner of the planet in my cake journey, so sometimes I make such compromises. I hope that you do not judge me for these liberties, but enjoy all that this world has to offer as dessert, because whatever we eat we should always have room for dessert. 🙂 He is that small but essential part of life that makes us smile, bring us closer and make us forget about differences, problems and sadness. And the calories … fuck them on them. 🙂

Next destination – Bermuda.