Recipe
🍰 DESSERT
Bojo Cake
A dense, moist cake of cassava and coconut spiked with rum and raisins, Suriname's Creole celebration bake.
Surinamese · medium · serves 12
prep 25 min · cook 75 min
~578 cal · 5g protein · 79g carbs · 27g fat · 6g fiber · 42g sugars · 22g sat fat (estimated, per serving)
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Bojo is the cake of Suriname's Creole community, a rich, flourless bake built entirely on grated and coconut. Moist to the point of being almost pudding-like, it is a fixture of birthdays, holidays, and any occasion worth marking.
Unlike a Western sponge, bojo relies on the starch of the and the fat of the coconut for its structure, bound with eggs and butter and darkened with plenty of brown sugar. Rum-soaked raisins and a hit of nutmeg and cinnamon give it its festive, boozy depth.
Baked long and slow until the top sets and the inside stays dense and sticky, it is cut into small, generous squares. Every Surinamese family guards its own recipe, and few desserts say celebration in Suriname quite like a bojo on the table.
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Make it yours
✓ Naturally vegetarian and gluten- 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 12
4 cups grated , woody core removed
2 cups grated coconut
4 eggs
1/2 cup butter, melted
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
1 cup
1 cup raisins
1/4 cup dark rum
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp grated nutmeg
2 tsp vanilla extract
Instructions
1
Soak the raisins in the rum for at least two hours, or overnight.
2
Grate the cassava on the finest side of the grater, taking care to cut out the woody core first, and mix it with the coconut, sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg.
✎ Chef’s note
Cut the core out of every piece. Leave it in and the whole cake tastes bitter, and there is no rescuing it afterwards.
3
Beat the eggs with the sugar until light, then beat in the melted butter, coconut milk and vanilla, and fold in the rum-soaked raisins.
✎ Chef’s note
Almond extract goes in alongside the vanilla in most Surinamese recipes and is a large part of what bojo tastes like. Candied tutti frutti often joins the raisins.
4
Pour into a greased, lined tin and bake at 325F (160C) until the top is set and deep brown, about 1 hour 15 minutes.
✎ Chef’s note
Bake it low and slow. Bojo should stay dense and moist inside, so a set top over a still-sticky centre is exactly right, not underdone.
5
Cool fully in the tin before cutting into small squares.
✎ Chef’s note
Bojo belongs to the family of grated-root cakes made all across the Caribbean, known in the English-speaking islands as pone. Dutch settlers in Suriname reached for local cassava to make the baking they had brought with them, which is why a flourless tropical cake tastes so much like a European one.
Surinamese Creole baking.
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🌏 While it simmers, know your destination
📍
Paramaribo. Pom is a substitution that turned into a tradition. Portuguese Jewish plantation families made a potato dish for the sabbath; potatoes would not grow here, so the grated corm of the pomtajer went in instead, with chicken and a sharp hit of bitter orange. The local line is that without pom there is no birthday.
🗺️
Suriname. Suriname may have the world's most diverse cuisine per capita, fusing Javanese, Indian, Creole, Chinese, and Dutch traditions. Roti, pom, and bami reflect a remarkable culinary crossroads on the South American coast.
🌍
South America. Migration reworked the plate within living memory. Japanese arrivals in Peru and Brazil produced Nikkei cooking, Italians made pasta and pizza entirely ordinary in Argentina, Uruguay and Sao Paulo, and West African cooking carried into Bahia by the slave trade gave Brazil dende palm oil, okra and a whole ritual repertoire.
The story behind this dish is up top, worth a read while the pot works.
More from Suriname
PomA festive baked casserole of grated pomtajer root and citrus-marinated chicken, crisp on top and tangy within.
BaraLittle savory fried rings of ground urdi and flour, green with chopped tajer leaf and heavy with masala, eaten hot with chutney or sambal.
Roti met KipGriddled split-pea roti served with a curried chicken, potato, and long-bean masala, Suriname's signature plate.
Browse all Suriname recipes →
Good to know
You’ll need: Oven, Mould or tin, Whisk.
Storing it: Store in an airtight container. Most keep 2 to 3 days at room temperature, and longer refrigerated.
Make it a Suriname meal
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Cuisine
Diet
Frequently asked questions
What is Bojo Cake?
A dense, moist cake of cassava and coconut spiked with rum and raisins, Suriname's Creole celebration bake.
Where does Bojo Cake come from?
Bojo Cake is a Surinamese dish from Paramaribo, Suriname.
Can Bojo Cake be made vegan, gluten-free, or dairy-free?
This Bojo Cake 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 Bojo Cake 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 Bojo Cake take to make?
About 100 minutes total (25 minutes prep, 75 minutes cooking), serving 12.
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