MADAMAGAZINE Your Magazine about Madagascar
Koba akondro is a thick cake made of bananas, rice flour and peanuts. In Madagascar, you can buy it as snack in train and trucker stations, folded in banana leaves. The big brother of Koba akondro is Koba ravina, a cake made only of rice flour, sugar and peanuts. It looks very similar inside, but is usually cut in large slices from long, big roles that vendors carry along in the city. They sell it to pedestrians as well as through Taxibrousse or other vehicles’ windows.
Ingredients:
- 3 ripe bananas
- 175 g rice flour
- 65 g brown sugar
- 150 g roasted, unsalted peanuts
- 1 vanilla pod
- 2 tea spoons of honey
- 1 banana leaf
- some raphia
And that’s how to do it:
Finely chop the peanuts in a mixer. Mix three quarters of the peanuts, the chopped bananas, rice flour, honey and brown sugar into a dough. Cut the vanilla pod lengthwise, scrape out the core and mix into the dough. The mass becomes very sticky and chewy-pulpy.
Cut the banana leaf into three or four smaller pieces and put these for 5 to 10 minutes in boiling water. This step is very important since it makes the banana leaves soft and easy to fold, otherwise they will break. Blot dry on tissue paper. Give some table spoons of dough in the middle of a banana leaf, add a layer of the remaining ground peanuts, and finish with another layer of dough. Fold two sides of the banana leaf above the dough, and roll up from one of the other sides. As an alternative to this roll shape, you can also fold small triangular or rectangular packages. Tie up your Kobas with raphia to prevent them from opening again. Steam over boiling water for 30 minutes.
Serve the Koba cut in slices (roll) or as whole small package. Remove the banana leaf and enjoy your cake!
