Forging Friendships, forming Fat Cakes

Passport & Plate - Miriam's Fat Cakes

Namibia | Friday, March 6, 2015 | 5 photos

Ingredients
6 cups cake flour
1tbs salt
10 gram instant yeast
1 cup sugar
1tbs vinegar
3 1/2 cups water
Oil for frying
confectioners sugar

 

How to prepare this recipe
In order to make Namibian Fat Cakes, you must first prepare yourself for something delicious. Remember the carnivals of your childhood. Then you must prepare yourself and your kitchen for the inevitable mess of confectioners' sugar and flour. Once you're ready, the rest is fair easy!
1. Mix flour, yeast, salt, and sugar together. Stir into a dry, white, fluffy pile
2. Mix vinegar into water and pour over the dry ingredients
3. Using a wooden spoon, mix into a soft dough, try to avoid the dough getting to lumpy. Nobody wants a lumpy fat cake. Save the lumps for a belly full of the tasty fried dough!
You may want to add a little water to the dough if it seems dry. Go with your instinct. It's usually right.
4. Cover dough and leave in a warm place until it doubles in size.
This can be a little boring. I recommend hanging out with your cats or throwing yourself a dance party while you wait. Email me if you need a cooking dance-party place list!
5. Heat the oil in a heavy base sauce pan. You'll know it's hot enough if you sprinkle water in the pan and the water sizzles into a little dance. (The water doesn't want to join your dance party, it's just science)
6. Dip a large spoon into the oil then use it to take spoonfuls of the risen dough from the bowl.
7. Drop spoonfuls of dough into the hot oil and fry until the fat cakes are a nice brown color and cooked in the middle. If you're in the USA, think - do these look like Munchkins (for Canadians, Timbits)
8. Serve plain or with a variety of sweet or savoury fillings. I like confectioners' sugar which is why it's an ingredient. Others like jam or minced lamb. Get creative.
Makes 20-25 fat cakes
This simple recipe may not have the complex spices or memorable flavor of some others, but it tastes like a reminder that our global community can always be home.

 

The story behind this recipe
In 2005 I lived in Namibia researching how girls learned about sex and healthy relationships at a small school in a former Apartheid-governed township. I was struggling. The girls’ interest levels were low, and the school’s HIV rates were high. I was walking home, feeling defeated, when a student offered to walk with me. In broken English she asked if I wanted a Fat Cake. As Americans, we’ve been saturated by a media that promotes an unhealthy relationship with food. I heard the term “Fat Cakes”, and immediately questioned what I was about to eat. It was nearly 100 degrees out and I was frustrated so my mind came to two conclusions: 1. Hopefully I’ll just sweat this out and 2. I am NOT in the position to turn down friends.
I put my trust in this welcoming student, visited a woman with a frying pan over a fire on the ground, and ordered two Fat Cakes. What I received was a warm, flaky ball of goodness. Upon a steamy first bite, I was transported to the lights and sounds of carnival games with the fried dough you’ve waited for all winter. I felt my first days working at Dunkin Donuts, and remembered a powdered sugar fight at Café du Monde in New Orleans. I had tasted my first delectable morsels of Namibian Fat Cake. That Fat Cake was more than a delicious donut-like ball; it was a reminder of our global interconnectedness and a step towards my first few friends in a new country.
The next day, on my way to school, I was sweating and sunburnt. This Boston girl was not accustomed to the African sun. I visited my new friend Miriam’s booth and asked if she was making Fat Cakes. She handed me five Fat Cakes and refused to take my South African Rand. “My payment,” she said, “is come and learn to make them.” Miriam and I became friends. She coached me on the process of winning over Namibian teenage girls. She told me stories of Apartheid and we explored race relations in the US and Africa. She taught me to make Fat Cakes, take risks and never stop learning from others.