How To Make Fried Bean Cake (Akara) With Blended Bean From Scratch

This hub is to introduce a very special, healthy snack that's very popular in Nigeria, West Africa. The snack, which can also be a complete meal in itself is called Akara, or Bean Cake.

Akara is a snack made entirely of the paste of blended beans. The beans' paste is usually seasoned with salt and pepper, plus some other ingredients Like chopped onions and crushed, dried pepper right before frying.

Akara is a very healthy meal that can be eaten anytime. It makes for a wholesome breakfast meal sandwich when paired with 2 slices of bread with the akara in-between, or with a hot cereal, such as, grit, malt-o-meal, cream of wheat, or 'ogi' (also known as 'akamu', or pap. A corn base custard like hot cereal). Akara can also be eaten for lunch or dinner with Gari.

Gari is a fine grounded cassava grain that's usually eaten as a cold cereal in water, or made into hot fufu meal called, eba.

When soaked in cold water with added sugar, gari can be a very satisfying, and refreshing meal, and even more so when eaten with 'akara'.

If you've ever eaten, or seen akara, you've probably seen it in ball-shaped forms, very much like donut holes. That's usually how akara should look. But, sometimes it also can be made flat.

Now, when I make akara, I like to make it flat like pancakes, since my kids prefer to eat it sandwiched between two slices of bread. So I'll be showing you the flat pancake-like version of akara or fried bean cake.

First, let's talk about the main ingredient in the akara or fried bean cake, the beans. Due to the significant amount of fiber and soluble fiber in beans, meals consisting mainly of beans are considered very healthy meal. You can get up to 13 grams of soluble fiber in 1 cup of cooked beans, and the soluble fiber found in beans can help to lower blood cholesterol.

Aside from the fibers, beans are also high in folate, protein, iron, and complex carbohydrates. Since the akara is made out of blended bean paste, the beans would have needed to be soaked, skinned, rinsed to remove all the skins, and then blended in a blender. This is a very tedious and long process, usually about two or more hours(preparation and cooking time combined).

But, thank goodness you wouldn't have to do all that. Because there are already bagged skinned beans, and even bagged dry powdered beans available for you to use. These cut down the preparation time by a whooping 1½ hours. You can find these ready-prepared bagged beans in most stores that cater to Africans, other ethnic groups, and in some oriental stores.

The already skinned beans will only need to be soaked, rinsed (to remove any dirt particles that may be present in the package), and then blended (I recommend using this if you really want the rich, appetizing taste closest to using the fresh beans for the akara).

You then mix in all the other ingredients listed above.

♦Follow Steps 2 - 6 in the Instructions Section (Frying The Bean Cake).

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If Using Powdered Beans in Bags

Substitute one and a half (1½) cup of the powdered beans for the 2 cups beans in the ingredients' list above. Using the powdered bean is the easiest way to make akara, as all you need is just to add water, plus all the other ingredients listed above to get the consistency you want for the paste.

♦Follow Steps 2 - 6 in the Instructions Section (Frying The Bean Cake).

The disadvantage of using the powdered beans is, it doesn't come close to the taste of using the fresh beans. Plus, you sometimes have to improvise by adding too many seasonings, such as, maggi (bouillion cubes) for taste.

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For those who prefer to use these red (Nigerian) beans, first soak the bean in warm water for about an hour. The warm water softens up the beans' skin and speeds up the skin removal process.

You will need to scrub the beans between your palms to get the skin off the beans, rinsing and getting rid of the skins as you go. After doing this (scrubbing and rinsing) for about a dozen times, you should get all of the skins off.

Once the bean skins are all gone, it's time to blend the beans in a blender. Blend until it reaches a smooth texture with no beans bits (see image below).

Remember, for a ball-shaped akara (fried bean cake), you can choose to deep fry bean cake if you prefer, just use a deep fryer, or deep wok with more oil in it.

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Author: Comfort Babatola - © 2013