Banana Akaras

The African origin of the word acra is well defined. It means “vegetable fritters” (or donuts) in the Ewe language of Dahomey but nobody knows when people started to create variations of the donuts by adding cod or ingredients other than vegetables. In the first half of the 20th century, those acras along with bread, composed the breakfast of workers from Martinique. They were mostly sold by street vendors. Akaras appear in a multitude of recipes around the world, both savory and sweet. As a matter of fact, I posted one of those recipes last June with the salt fish cakes from Barbados, which look very similar to the famous cod fritters. In Africa, several names have been given to donuts. For example, gbofloto, puff puff, pof-pof or botocoin, mikaté and finally… sfenjs, the donuts from my native Morocco of which I have fond memories.