Elijah Cakes

I have been teaching about the prophet Elijah on Sundays in church.  God provided food for him in the desert (ravens brought him bread and meat), God provided food for him, the widow and her son (God filled the oil and flour everyday) and God provided bread for him after he had walked 100 miles fleeing Jezebel.

We have children coming to us who are protein malnourished (I have already written several blogs about this.).  So, we decided we needed to create a cake/bread for the children that is very high in calories and protein.  We decided to call them Elijah cakes because we are trusting God to provide the food to feed these children that He is sending to us.

Great idea, we have the name, now we need the recipe!  We looked up a product called plumpy nut which is what the government gives the malnourished patients.  It is 500 kcal per package and packed with protein.  It is a spread for bread and has peanuts, oil, sugar and milk.  That would be great to buy and use, but it is not available for purchase.  So...... we decided to create our own recipe.  How hard can it be?

I started with a standard hoecake recipe I found online and then started changing things.  We started with a hoecake because there is something here called mandasi, which is a fried sweet bread and all the kids love it. We are trying to keep it similar to a food they know, so they will eat it better.

Round one:

- extremely dense
 - needs more sugar
 - overall a great taste

Almost as thick as peanut butter

They did not wanted to completely cook because the batter was so dense!

  

Luckily, they finished frying just in time for Jackson, David and Solivia to try them.

David ate his up before I could get the camera

Solivia like hers too, and took some home for the day

I thought Jackson was really enjoying them, until I looked in the floor (this is what he does with the egg yolks too!).

 

  

Busted!

Round Two:
(less flour, more sugar, more egg, more water)

I decided this was more like cake batter so I made cupcakes and fried some.

 

  

- much lighter
 - great taste
- Brenda says they need more sugar
 - a little dry, more oil?

I will try again tomorrow, with another recipe.  Luckily, there is no shortage of people around here to try them out on.  One thing I have to watch though, is that these should not be eaten by people like me that need to loose weight. . . the muffins are packed with calories!