North America · Volume 33, The Rice Coast, the Corridor and the Delta
Benne wafers
Charleston, South Carolina
Illustration
- Time
- 30 minutes
- Researched
- Researched from 117 sources in the brief
As tradition built it
Makes about 40 small wafers. About 30 minutes.
Ingredients
- 150g benne seed (or sesame seed)
- 115g butter, softened
- 200g light brown sugar
- 1 egg
- 120g plain flour
- ½ tsp baking powder
- ½ tsp vanilla extract
- a pinch pinch of salt
Method
- Toast the benne seed in a dry pan over medium heat until fragrant and just starting to darken, then set aside to cool.
- Cream the butter and sugar together, beat in the egg and vanilla.
- Fold in the flour, baking powder and salt, then the toasted seed.
- Drop small teaspoons of batter well spaced on a lined baking tray, and bake at 180°C until golden and lacy at the edges, roughly 8 to 10 minutes.
- Cool fully on the tray before lifting, as the wafers are fragile while warm.
What a modern chef changes
The seed toasted and ground for a paste-based wafer with a deeper, more concentrated benne flavour
Rung 5
Method
- Toast the benne seed more deliberately, to a visibly darker stage than the traditional recipe calls for, then grind half of it to a coarse paste in a spice grinder while still warm, per Rung 5, folding both the paste and the remaining whole toasted seed into the batter for a wafer with real depth rather than a purely textural crunch.