Ghanaian desserts and sweets

How Ghana does sweetness

Ghana is not a place of elaborate plated puddings, and if you arrive expecting a dessert trolley you will be surprised. Sweetness here is woven into everyday snacking instead, sold hot from a pan by the roadside or chilled in a bottle from a cool box. As a team based in Kasoa who arrange these trips every week, we think that is a good thing, because the best sweet things in Ghana are fresh, cheap and full of character. You do not book a table for them; you simply come across them as you go about your day, and that is a large part of the charm.

The building blocks are groundnuts (peanuts), coconut, ripe tropical fruit and the gentle caramel of palm and cane sugar. Dairy plays a smaller role than it does in Europe, which means many treats are lighter than you might guess. If you have a sweet tooth, the trick is simply to keep your eyes open at markets, traffic junctions and lorry stations, where trays and pans appear from mid-morning onwards. For the wider picture, our Ghanaian food guide sets the scene.

Bofrot, the everyday favourite

If you try one thing, make it bofrot: golden, slightly crisp balls of fried dough, faintly spiced with nutmeg and dusted or glazed with sugar. They are the doughnut of Ghana, eaten at breakfast, as an afternoon pick-me-up, or wrapped in paper for the road. Bought fresh from the pan they are warm, soft inside and genuinely hard to stop at one.

You will also meet their cousins: chin chin (crunchy fried pastry cut into little squares) and kelewele, the sweet-spicy fried plantain that blurs the line between snack and pudding. We cover that one in our red-red and kelewele guide, and you will spot all of these on any wander through our Ghana street food guide favourites.

Groundnut cakes, toffee and coconut

Ghana's love of the groundnut shows up in two chewy classics. Nkate cake is a slab of roasted peanuts set in hard caramel, cut into blocks and sold in clear wrap, snappy and intensely nutty. Nkate toffee is softer and more buttery, closer to a fudge. Both keep well, travel well and make honest little gifts to take home.

Coconut lovers are well served too. Kaklo and coconut toffee, grated coconut bound in caramel, turn up on the same trays, while whole young coconuts are split open with a cutlass for the sweet water and soft jelly inside, a brilliant thirst-quencher on a hot day. You will also find condensed-milk sweets and simple sponge slices at bakeries and provision stores. For a proper sit-down treat afterwards, some of the spots in our best restaurants in Accra round-up finish meals with tropical fruit and ice cream.

Sweet drinks and glorious fruit

Do not leave without a bottle of atadwe milk, the creamy tiger-nut drink often blended with a little dates and coconut. It is naturally sweet, nutty and best served very cold. Sobolo, the deep-red hibiscus drink, ranges from tart to sugary depending on the maker, and fresh sugar-cane juice appears from hand presses at some markets.

Then there is the fruit, which may be the sweetest thing of all. Ghanaian mango in season is extraordinary, pineapple is available almost year-round, and pawpaw, watermelon and small sweet bananas are everywhere. A wedge of chilled pineapple after a hot afternoon needs no improvement. One honest caveat: pair street sweets with bottled or treated water, as we explain in our water and what to drink guide.

How to buy well, and a few caveats

Buying is half the fun. Head for the busiest stall, because high turnover means fresh stock and cleaner oil. Carry small cedi notes, since sellers rarely have change for large ones, and mobile money is handy for slightly bigger purchases. A smile and a little basic Twi go a long way, and a quick look at our etiquette and customs notes never hurts.

A few honest words: prices drift with seasons and inflation, so treat any figure as a rough guide and check on the day. If you have allergies, remember groundnuts are in almost everything sweet here, so ask before you buy. Take normal food-hygiene care, especially with anything left sitting in the sun, and check any personal health advice with a travel clinic before you travel. Do all that and Ghana's sweet side becomes one of the small daily joys of the trip, the bofrot with your morning coffee, the cold atadwe at midday, the wedge of mango as the sun goes down.

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