Tuesday, August 20, 2013

South African Pastries And Desserts

By Helga Stokes


In many countries, like the United States, African cooking is not well known. However, this cuisine is actually very flavorful and most dishes have a high nutrition content. South Africa in particular is very unique with a variety of foods include soups, stews, wild game, seafood and a variety of desserts. Through the influence of German, French, Indian, Dutch and British culture, some amazing dishes have been developed, especially South African pastries.

Pastry items like koeksisters, which are like fried doughnuts, are among the top of the list for people's favorites. Melktert, or milk tart, is also another popular item. Melktert is a custard based dessert that is thought to have been influenced by Dutch settlers. The name of the dessert itself uses a combination of Dutch and African words.

Mulva pudding is also pretty common in South Africa. It is a dessert that has an almost cake like consistency, but has a sweet condensed milk based sauce poured over the top. Like most South African sweets, milk and eggs are a staple for this particular recipe. In fact, most desserts and pastries from the area use the two ingredients because they were so common among the Dutch settlements.

Soetkoekies are another regional favorite, even though some people do not like to classify them as desserts. In essence, they are a spicy biscuit that contains both almonds and port. The spice, however, comes from ingedients like ginger, cloves and cinnamon instead of peppers.

Crunchies are a cookie bar made with oatmeal and shredded coconut. In the region, they are as popular as chocolate chip cookies are in the United States. They are a preferred sweet for children and adults alike. The ingredients are very basic, all would be items commonly found in a person's refrigerator and pantry. They too contain milk, which as mentioned before is a very common ingredient in the area because of Dutch influence.

Peppermint Crisp tart is another highly popular regional dessert. The main ingredient in it is Peppermint Crisp chocolate, which is a candy bar sold in South Africa and Australia and manufactured by Nestle. The recipe also calls for Tennis biscuits, which are a coconut based cookie common to the area as well. These two ingredients will be hard pressed to find in some parts of the world, but many online retailers carry them and ship worldwide.

Krakelinge is also a cookie very common in the area. Very basic pantry items and almonds make up the ingredients list, like many of the other recipes. However, they don't look like your typical cookie though. They actually favor biscotti more than a cookie with their shape and texture. The difference between the two is in how they are sliced, which is thicker and in a more squared shape in comparison.

There are many different South African pastries and desserts out there. The biggest majority of them use nothing but very basic ingredients and do not involve complicated baking processes. Almonds are a common theme in almost all dessert recipes from the area. However, even though many ingredients are the same, the taste is much different between each one.




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