Puff-puff

Type	Doughnut
Course	snack
Region or state	West Africa
Main ingredients	Flour, yeast, sugar, salt, butter, water, eggs, vegetable oil
Variations	Boflot, kala, mikate, togbei, beignet dougoup
Media: Puff-puff

Puff-puff is a traditional snack made of fried dough and eaten across Africa, especially in the west of the continent. The name "puff-puff" is from Nigeria, but many other names and varities of the pastry exist (see below).

Puff-puffs are generally made of dough containing flour, yeast, sugar, butter, salt, water and eggs (which are optional), and deep-fried in vegetable oil to a golden-brown color. Baking powder can be used in place of yeast, but yeast is more common.^[1] After frying, puff-puffs can be rolled in sugar. Like the French beignet and the Italian zeppole, puff-puffs can be rolled in any spice or flavoring such as cinnamon, vanilla and nutmeg. They may be served with a fruit dip of strawberry or raspberry.

Varieties and other names

In Francophone West Africa it is known as gato in Guinea and Mali (from the French gateau) and beignet in Senegal and Cameroon, as well as in The Gambia. A common Senegalese variety uses millet flour rather than wheat.^[2] Cameroonians accompany beignets with beans.^[1]

Other names for the food include buffloaf (or bofrot) in Ghana, botokoin in Togo, bofloto in the Ivory Coast, mikate in Congo, micate or bolinho in Angola, legemat in Sudan, kala in Liberia, and vetkoek, amagwinya, or magwinya in South Africa and Zimbabwe. The prominence of this food stretches even to the southern and eastern edges of Africa, where it is mostly known as mandazi.^[3]