East African Mandazi Recipe (2024)

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Today i was craving for Mandazi so I decided to do a little bit of cooking. For those who are not familiar with Mandazi, Mandazi (in coastal are people call it Mahamri) is East African snack, available anywhere from street vendors and served in hotels, usually for breakfast. It goeswell with tea or coffee.

Although the closest comparison would be with western donuts, the texture of Mandazi is much thicker almost a bread like on the inside. Recipe is very simple and leaves a lot of space for improvisation.

When I was living on Zanzibar, a local lady taught me how to make Mandazi, but till today Ihave never done it before. To take advantageof this opportunity Idecided to take some photos along the way at least until the messy part:)

How to Make Mandazi

Ingredients – original Zanzibar Mandazi:

1 kilo of white flour

2 eggs
4 spoons of sugar
1 big pinch of cardamom
1 spoon of powdered yeast
1/2 a dcl of oil
1/2 a dcl of warm water

+ fritting oil

Instead of water you can also use coconut milk. All ingredients must have room temperature. Mix all the ingredients together, you can do it by hands or use a dough mixer if you have one. I had time and used my hands. With kneading, dough will become soft but not sticky.

After kneading for about 10, 15 minutes, dough has to rest for 20 minutes in dark bowl covered with a cloth to rise double the size. Afterwards halvedough into smaller pieces and make smaller dough balls of size of a golf ball.

Use rolling pin and flatten each dough ball to the size where the patch is about 0,5 cm thick. Cut vertically and horizontally to get small pieces. Set them aside and heat the oil.The secret of good Mandazi is that the dough rests twice, firsttime right after kneading and the second time few minutes before the fritting.

Although Itried to stick to original recipe, Icouldn’t help not to do some minor changes, instead of refined oil Iused organic coconut oil which is healthier and splurged with more spices. Along with exotic cardamom Ilove ginger and cinnamon, so Iwas generous with all of them.

I used three spoons of sugar, two spoons of brown sugar and one spoon of vanilla flavoured sugar. I was really tempted to use dark wholewheat flour but this time i didn’t want to risk a failure so next time will be definitely using dark flour.

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   See Also

   Recipe: The national dish of Tanzania - Ugali na Maharage ya nazi

   Daniela N06/15/2016 at 9:22 pm

   Looks really easy to make, although I`m not sure I got the right taste until I travel to its origins!

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     Admin06/16/2016 at 12:20 pm

     I think its better to travel to origin and cook later:)

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   shayan Naveed06/16/2016 at 7:09 am

   Ooooh, I wonder if they had these at our hotel in S.Africa. Can’t remember because I was gorging on the other amazing food at breakfast. But this looks yummy. They look like sweet Samosas.

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     Admin06/16/2016 at 12:06 pm

     Perhaps they look like samosas but dont taste anything like samosas:)

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   Megan Indoe06/16/2016 at 8:47 am

   Oh wow! That looks tasty! I want to try this out. Thanks for sharing! I would also love to visit East Africa too and compare my cooking with the real stuff!

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     Admin06/16/2016 at 12:06 pm

     I think I nailed it:) this amount gives you about 40 small pieces of Mandazi, so you can lower the amount of ingredients:)

4. 

   Amanda Williams06/16/2016 at 9:44 am

   Oh wow, I haven’t had mandazi for ages and am so going to try and make these. You make it sound relatively easy (well within my capabilities at least). Pinning the recipe for future use. Thank you 🙂

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     Admin06/16/2016 at 12:07 pm

     Let me know how they turned out!:)

5. 

   Voyager06/16/2016 at 10:50 am

   This looks like a tasty and easy to make snack, will give it a try and hope it comes out well 🙂

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     Admin06/16/2016 at 12:08 pm

     Love them, best for breakfast with coffee!

6. 

   Meg Jerrard06/16/2016 at 11:17 am

   I love cooking even though my final product never tastes like it should lol 😀 Looking forward to giving this a go – thankyou for the recipe!

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     Admin06/16/2016 at 12:11 pm

     I am not a kitchen person but it really is a simple recipe. For local ladies making Mandazi is like making scrambled eggs:)

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   Sally06/17/2016 at 3:25 am

   Oh yummy, they look delish! Might have to be my next cooking experiment 🙂

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   Cynthia06/17/2016 at 3:56 am

   I don’t think I’ve ever tried this before! It looks tasty! I’m not much as a kitchen person but I’m bookmarking this to perhaps give it a try in the near future 🙂

9. 

   Janna06/17/2016 at 8:49 am

   Nice blog post idea! I had no idea what Mandazi was until this post so thanks for sharing! I cook a lot but I’ve never really been a gited baker but this looks easy enough I might actually try it!

10. 

    Ivy06/17/2016 at 8:55 am

    Ive never tried any African cuisine before! I dont think Ive actually seen it offered by restaurants where I live. This looks YUMMY and simple enough to make. Thanks for sharing, cant wait to try it!

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    judy wilson06/20/2016 at 8:26 pm

    This mandazi recipe looks like it would make a great snack for my family. It’s interesting that you were taught how to make this in Zanzibar. I think it would be interesting to try this to get a taste of what people in East Africa eat. Thanks for sharing this recipe!

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    Curious02/12/2017 at 8:42 pm

    Hmmm, why do you have eggs on the picture of your ingredients when eggs are mentioned nowhere in the ingredients?

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      Safari Junkie02/12/2017 at 9:52 pm

      Thanks for sharp eye! Eggs are in the recipe. Dont know how i forgot about them in the post.

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        Safari Junkie02/12/2017 at 9:57 pm

        But there is also version without the eggs, so if you skip it its no problem