It hasn’t been a frequent experience of mine to find any kind of dessert in my African wanderings.  So, I was especially delighted when my host, Teresa, showed up with a rice cake one morning.  She sold slices to her neighbors who snapped them up like hot cakes, er . . .  hot rice cakes, but I got a huge free slab as her guest.

I told her we must sit down and discuss the recipe.

Teresa’s recipe was huge!  Feel free to cut all ingredients in half.

Ingredients:     

2 cans of rice 1 Tbs baking soda 20 very ripe bananas

1 kilo of water 1 beer bottle of oil Coal pot & sturdy cookware

   
You can’t really just say a “cup” or a “can” when getting recipes from Liberian cooks.  You have to see the container.  This time, the can was huge.  It’s one of the large cans that could be the size of two Campbell’s soup cans.  And, if you’re using two of them, you have yourself quite a supply of rice.

Wash the rice, soak it for an hour, strain off all the water using your trusty palm butter sifter if you have one (or a colander), and then beat the rice to smithereens in a mortar with a pestle.

Actually, I’m thinking dry rice in a blender might be a good way to go.  The whole reason for soaking is to make it easier to mash in the mortar – which you most likely don’t have.

When the rice is ground, add the baking soda and mash up your twenty bananas.  Yes, I said twenty, but Teresa used finger bananas instead of what you normally see.  I suggest five bananas if you go for a full-sized dish.

A kilo of water?  Seriously?  Is that the same as a liter?  After some research I learned the answer.  A kilo of water is about the same as a quart or four cups.

And now, we get to the oil.  Teresa said you could use red palm oil or yellow vegetable oil.  However, I strongly suggest you don’t go with authentic red palm oil here.  Beer bottles come in what I consider a regular size and a jumbo size. The cake was not only greasy, it was saturated.  It ranks as one of the greasiest things I’ve ever eaten.  Well, actually, I only ate half of it before giving the rest away. So, I'm thinking Teresa might have had a jumbo size bottle. I never checked her kitchen.

Once your recipe is mixed and oiled, it’s time for baking.  In Tugbaken, there was no oven.  Hey, there was no electricity for the oven.  There were, however, little solar powered lights that totally would have transformed my Peace Corps experience.  I usually went to bed around 7:30, when the sun went down, because lantern light didn’t do it for me.  Anyway, Teresa showed me how to bake on her coal pot.  All cooking is done in heavy metal pots.  She put her mix in the pot and placed it over the hot coals.  However, she needed to bake, so she inverted the lid of her pot and placed hot coals over the cake as well.

Bake for two hours and then sell slices on your front porch to all your neighbors.

Now, if this recipe piques your interest, I’m going to give you an Americanized version.

For starters, every recipe I saw in my research used cream of rice.  That didn't exist in Tugbaken.  As far as I saw, there were no stores in the village.  The closest town was an hour and a half walk to the main road.  So, instead of cream of rice, Teresa used the rice that she and her husband, Daniel, grew on their farm.  You have permission to go to the grocery store for cream of rice.

Stir it all up and put it in a baking pan.  Eggs would be home produced in Tugbaken and milk would have been powdered.  I seriously doubt if nutmeg would be available but perhaps you could get fresh ginger on market day.

If you are adventurous, you can try to cook it over hot coals with additional coals on the lid.  I baked chocolate cake like that in Liberia with a 50% success rate.  Even unsuccessful chocolate cake tasted good there.  But, if you choose, place the cake in the oven at 400 degrees F for 30 minutes.

Just like cornbread and regular cake, it's ready when it passes the toothpick or fork test.  Don't know that test? You cook less than me.  Stick the toothpick in the middle of the cake.  If it comes out clean, your cake is done.  And, since we never seem to have enough sugar, dust some powdered sugar on the top.