Okay so in Nigeria we have this thing called Akara. It literally translates to bean cakes or beans fritters. Most Nigerians can relate to waking up in the morning to the amazing mouth watering aroma of Akara. Almost everyone in Nigeria has this for breakfast on Saturday morning after cleaning their houses and washing their clothes and doing lots of house chores in general.

Akara is so so so indulgent especially when eaten with custard or pap or garri(cassava flakes).

The only downside to Akara and imma be honest is peeling the beans😪. Thank God for technology, if not you'd have had to peel the beans with your hand or a stone, nobody wants that. Now we be chilling with our blender and within seconds, tada the beans are peeled.

Making the Akara

Ingredients

2 cups of beans

2 medium onions (1/2 diced and set aside)

8 scotch bonnet peppers seperated into half

2 1/2 cups of water for bending

1/4 cup of crayfish

Enough oil for deep frying

The first thing you'll have to do is to wash your beans and remove any stones. The easiest way to do that is pour water into the beans. The dirt will come right to the top, skim it right off then using your hands remove the beans from the water right before you get to the bottom of the bowl stop taking out the beans, remove the excess water from the bowl and using your fingers check for stones at the bottom discard any ones you find. Repeat this process twice to make sure no stones are left in the beans and then head over to the blender.

Peeling the beans

Put your beans in the blender and add enough water, make sure the water level is well above the beans in the blender and pulse for 5 seconds, repeat this process until all your beans are peeled.

Now stir the beans in the blender and pour of the skins of the into a separate bowl. Please discard those skins properly by tying them in a plastic bag and tossing them in the bin. Soak your beans in the fridge for 3 hours until double in size.

Blending the beans

Now the beans have doubled in size we are going to blend them until a very thick, smooth and fluffy batter is formed.

To your blender add the water,beans, pepper, onion, crayfish and bullion cubes and blend on medium speed until it is well pureed at this stage well have a grainy and separated batter which is not ideal for making the bean fritters. Blitz your blender and blend the mixture on high speed again until the fritter batter looks like fluffy cake batter, it will no longer be separated and it would've increased in volume, remove from the blender and set aside.

Frying the Fritters

Chop up the extra scotch bonnet peppers and onions and gently fold into the batter.

Heat up your groundnut oil in a heavy duty frypan, make sure it is deep enough for deep frying. When it is moderately hot not too hot that its smoking and your fire alarm goes off or too cold that when when you add your batter it sinks to the bottom and sops up all the oil. It should be right in between, please this stage is crucial for the outcome of our fritters, so make sure the oil temperature is perfect.😉

Now spoon the batter with a regular sized iron table spoon slowly into the oil. Fry until golden brown then flip unto the other side and fry until golden brown too, with a slotted poon or a spider remove the fritters and set unto a wire rack lined kitchen paper to soak up all the extra oil.

There you have it, perfect breakfast for Saturday morning😋. Yum😋😋😋.