Recipe
🍰 DESSERT
Ngalakh (Baobab & Peanut Millet Cream)
Steamed millet couscous folded into a sweet, nutty peanut cream soured with baobab-fruit pulp, chilled and scented with orange-blossom and vanilla.
Senegalese · easy · serves 6
prep 20 min · cook 25 min
~592 cal · 17g protein · 74g carbs · 28g fat · 6g fiber · 29g sugars · 10g sat fat (estimated, per serving)
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Ngalakh is a Senegalese celebration dessert built from three humble Sahelian staples: steamed (thiakry), peanut paste, and the tangy dried pulp of the baobab fruit, known locally as bouye. The peanut butter gives it richness, the baobab a bright, almost citrusy sourness, and sugar with orange-blossom water and vanilla ties them together into a thick, spoonable cream.
The dish is most closely tied to Easter, when Senegalese Christian families prepare it in large quantities at the end of Lent and send bowls of it to Muslim neighbours, friends and colleagues. That act of sharing across faiths, an expression of the Senegalese value of teranga (hospitality), is as much a part of the dish as its ingredients, and it also appears at other celebrations and religious holidays.
Recipes vary from household to household, with some cooks adding raisins, grated coconut, banana or a little dairy for extra richness. It is always served cold, often with a final sprinkle of sugar just before eating.
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Make it yours
✓ Naturally vegetarian and gluten-, egg- and pork-free. No swaps needed.
Toggle a diet and the ingredients rewrite themselves with regional substitutes.
🥕 Vegetarian
🌱 Vegan
🌾 Gluten-Free
🥛 Dairy-Free
🥜 Nut-Free
🥚 Egg-Free
🐖 Pork-Free
Dietary labels are a cooking guide, not allergen-safety advice. We track dairy, egg, gluten, tree nuts and peanuts (we count coconut as a tree nut, following FDA labeling), fish, and shellfish; we do not screen for sesame, soy, mustard, celery, or sulphites. If you have a food allergy, read the label on every product you use, and note that a kitchen can cross-contaminate in ways a recipe cannot control.
Ingredients
US
Metric
Serves 6
2 cups (thiakry)
1 cup smooth natural peanut butter (unsweetened)
1/2 cup baobab fruit powder (bouye)
1/2 cup, plus more to serve sugar
2 tbsp butter
1 tbsp orange-blossom water
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/3 cup raisins
1/4 cup grated coconut
a pinch grated nutmeg
a pinch salt
Instructions
1
Steam the millet couscous over simmering water until tender, hydrating and fluffing it partway through so the grains stay separate; toss the hot grains with the butter, coconut, raisins and nutmeg.
✎ Chef’s note
If you only have durum-wheat couscous it can stand in, but millet couscous is traditional and keeps the dish gluten-free.
2
Dissolve the baobab powder in about 2 cups of water, let it rest, then strain out the fibres and seeds to leave a smooth, tangy juice.
3
Whisk the peanut butter with a little of the baobab juice until loose and lump-free, then combine with the rest of the juice, the sugar, orange-blossom water, vanilla and a pinch of salt.
✎ Chef’s note
Add the peanut butter to the liquid gradually while whisking so it emulsifies smoothly instead of seizing into lumps.
4
Fold the fluffed millet couscous into the peanut-baobab cream, adding a splash of water if needed for a thick, pourable, porridge-like consistency.
5
Chill thoroughly, then serve cold in bowls with an extra sprinkle of sugar on top.
Senegalese Easter and celebration tradition.
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🌏 While it simmers, know your destination
📍
Dakar. The dish reigns here but did not begin here. Ceebu jen is traced to Saint-Louis up the coast and popularly credited to a nineteenth-century cook, Penda Mbaye, who is said to have switched to broken rice during a shortage; that broken rice was imported from French Indochina, which makes the national dish a colonial-trade product. UNESCO inscribed it in December 2021.
🗺️
Senegal. The broken rice in ceebu jen is the point rather than a shortcut, a taste formed when colonial-era imports of fractured grain became what people cooked with. The dish is credited to Penda Mbaye, a cook in nineteenth-century Saint-Louis, and its knowledge and practices were inscribed by UNESCO in 2021.
🌍
Africa. The structure repeats across most of the continent: one starch and one sauce. A grain or root is cooked stiff, torn or rolled by hand, and used to carry a stew of leaves, groundnut, okra or fish, usually from a shared bowl and with the right hand. UNESCO listings have followed that logic, inscribing couscous in 2020 as a shared Maghreb tradition and Ivorian attieke in 2024.
The story behind this dish is up top, worth a read while the pot works.
More from Senegal
Thieboudienne (Senegalese Fish & Rice)Senegal’s national dish: herb-stuffed fish braised with vegetables over deeply tomato-stained broken rice.
Poulet YassaChicken smothered in a mountain of lemon-and-mustard onions, grilled then braised, Casamance’s gift to West Africa.
FondéA comforting Senegalese millet porridge cooked with milk, sugar, and a hint of orange-flower or nutmeg.
Browse all Senegal recipes →
Good to know
You’ll need: Steamer, Whisk.
Storing it: Keeps 2 to 3 days refrigerated. Resteam or warm through gently to serve.
Make it a Senegal meal
Thieboudienne (Senegalese Fish & Rice)Dinner
BissapDrink
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Cuisine
Diet
Frequently asked questions
What is Ngalakh (Baobab & Peanut Millet Cream)?
Steamed millet couscous folded into a sweet, nutty peanut cream soured with baobab-fruit pulp, chilled and scented with orange-blossom and vanilla.
Where does Ngalakh (Baobab & Peanut Millet Cream) come from?
Ngalakh (Baobab & Peanut Millet Cream) is a Senegalese dish from Dakar, Senegal.
Can Ngalakh (Baobab & Peanut Millet Cream) be made vegan, gluten-free, or dairy-free?
This Ngalakh (Baobab & Peanut Millet Cream) recipe includes substitution suggestions for vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free, nut-free, egg-free, and pork-free versions, including several at once such as gluten-free and dairy-free together. Treat them as a starting guide rather than a guarantee, and see the allergen note below.
Is Ngalakh (Baobab & Peanut Millet Cream) safe for people with food allergies?
Our dietary labels and substitutions are a cooking guide, not medical or allergen-safety advice. We track dairy, egg, gluten, tree nuts and peanuts (we count coconut as a tree nut, following FDA labeling), fish, and shellfish, but we do not screen for sesame, soy, mustard, celery, or sulphites. If you have a food allergy, always read the label on every product you use, and remember a home or commercial kitchen can cross-contaminate ingredients in ways a recipe cannot control.
How long does Ngalakh (Baobab & Peanut Millet Cream) take to make?
About 45 minutes total (20 minutes prep, 25 minutes cooking), serving 6.
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