L'Ortulinu Yogurt Cake

*This recipe uses the 125 gram yogurt cup as a unit of measure. Perfect if you don't have measuring cups around! It is featured in my article: Corsica, France: A WWOOFer's Paradise

3 eggs
150 grams melted butter OR 6 soup spoons of oil
2 yogurt cups of unrefined cane sugar
3 yogurt cups flour (can be all-purpose, whole wheat, or a mix)
1 yogurt cup
1 packet OR 1 teaspoon baking powder

Preheat the oven at 210 C.

In a large bowl, beat together the eggs and sugar with a wire whisk.
Add the melted butter or oil and beat well.
Add the yogurt and continue beating until well incorporated.
Add the flour and baking powder and mix until you have a smooth batter.
Pour the batter into a greased loaf pan.

Lower the oven to 180 C and place the pan on the middle rack.

Bake for roughly 30 minutes. The cake is done when a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean.

Nathalie's Crème au fruit de baobab: Baobab Cream Pudding

4 Rounded Tablespoons baobab fruit powder
5 Level Tablespoons sugar
400 ml room temperature milk
100 ml milk
3 sheets of unflavored gelatin







Mix together the baobab powder and the sugar in a medium bowl. Slowly add 400 ml of room temperature milk. Mix it well to form a runny batter. Strain the mixture into another bowl to remove excess threads and bits of seed.

Soften the gelatin in enough cold water to cover the sheets. Pour 100 ml of milk into a small pot. Strain the now rubbery sheets of gelatin and add them to the pot over low heat. Stir until the sheets have completely dissolved.

Add the gelatin mixture to the baobab batter and stir well to combine. Pour the mixture into small ramekins. Leave the crème in the refrigerator for at least 4 hours to allow it to set.

Nathalie recommends serving the crème with a bissap or mango coulis. It's also delicious with a mango and pineapple fruit salad.

Serves 5

This recipe is featured in my entry, Culinary Safari.

Mango Sorbet for a Hot Day

It's mango season in Niger! The capital is overflowing with the large, warmly-colored fruit which grows well all over West Africa.

As you drive down the dusty roads, you can stop and buy a kilo or two from the young men who push neatly stacked piles of mangoes in wheelbarrows up and down the streets.

But if you have your own mango tree, you are truly lucky because their branches are heavy with the sticky, sweet fruit right now.

These Nigerien mangoes are smaller than their cousins in Benin and Togo, but they are no less delicious. Their only drawback is the large amount of fibrous threads embedded in the flesh. However, if you are going to make mango sorbet, these threads won't bother you a bit! This week, Paulina and I experimented with some local mangoes plucked from the branches of a neighbor's tree. We used the "Soft-Fruit Sorbet" recipe from How to Cook Everything, by Mark Bittman. While he suggests using an ice cream maker, we relied on patience and old-fashioned arm power.

Mango Sorbet

1 1/2 cups mango, peeled and seeded
1 cup milk
1 cup powdered sugar, or to taste
1 Tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon or lime juice

• Purée the mangoes in a blender.
• Strain the fruit through a fine sieve or strainer to separate the fibers from the pulp. You may need to press it through the sieve with a spoon.
• In a medium-sized bowl, combine the milk, sugar, and 1 1/2 cups of the strained mango pulp. Stir well to dissolve the sugar.
• Put the bowl in the freezer and stir the contents every 20 minutes for the next 2 hours. This prevents it from freezing into a hard block of ice.
• The sorbet is best eaten fresh when the mixture has frozen to the right consistency (I don't know how you like your sorbet, but I like it when it is a nice, firm slush that can hold its shape). Once the sorbet has formed, you can also keep it in the freezer until you are ready to eat. Just leave it at room temperature for a minute or two until it is soft enough to scoop out into bowls.