Kasarachi's Pastries Kitchen : Spongy Puff Puff Recipe

Welcome my blog and the very first post of my blog.
I am really proud of myself for taking this step to share my start a blog and share my personal cooking stories and ideas with everyone. I started cooking at a very young age and for me, I loved it because it was a way of relaxing, channeling my energy into something and producing a very tasty and creative result.
For me, the Kitchen has always been a place of personal comfort and a place where i turn my sadness into joy by creatively reproducing and designing tasty meals.

My first blog and post will be making Naija style Puff Puff. You know the puff puff you buy on the road side in Naija, that goes for like 10 Naira, that is the puff puff. It is very sweet, spongy, tasty and mouth filling. In making puff puff, you need patience, love and you SMILEY face.

500 grams/4 cups of flour (if you do not have a scale, please use measuring cup)
4 teaspoons of fleischmann's yeast.
1 cup of lukewarm water
3/4 cup of lukewarm water (to dissolve the yeast)
1/2 cup of sugar
1 Nutmeg
1/4 tsp of salt
Oil for Frying
1 large bowl
One pot or Deep Saucepan (Please never use regular frying pan)
A smiley face and much love

In preparing puff puff, different people have different yeast choices. Some prefer Instant Yeast, for me, I prefer the yeast used in bread making (even though it take 45 minutes to rise, within that 45 minutes, I am able to prepare ingredients for making another dish as well as attend to my 9 month old son). For those who want to give their puff puff to have extra taste, you can use palm-wine (ensure that the palm-wine has not been opened and has been kept in a dark place for a while). I personally love Fleischmann's Active Dry Yeast.
Add the flour, sugar, salt and nutmeg and mix together. Mix the 3/4 cup of lukewarm water and yeast together until completely dissolved ( You will need to use your hand to mix the water and yeast so that the yeast dissolves properly.Pour the yeast into the the bowl and mix. Then pour the lukewarm water as needed into the batter the batter until it becomes soft, gummy and smooth. Do not make batter watery.
My mom is a super mom because she uses the bread yeast (which usually takes a long time), however, her puff puff batter rises in less than 45 minutes. When using the bread yeast, it takes longer to rise, usually between 60 Minutes to 90 Minutes to rise. However, my mom has a magical power, I say magical because I tried her method and had an epic fail. What my mom does is that after mixture of ingredients, she puts the dough in a wide bowl, covers the bowl, and takes the bowl t outside, where the sun can directly heat it up and the uses another bigger bowl or a bucket to cover the bowl containing the puff puff batter and keeps it directly under the Sun. After 30 minutes, the batter would have risen so much that you begin to wonder how much flour she used. My mom's style never works for me, so what I do is put mine in my over and I give it 45 - 60 minutes to rise properly.
Once the batter has risen, it is time to heat up your oil. Once the oil is hot and ready, Scoop the dough using you hands and release through your thumb and index finger (this is how it takes the round form) into the hot oil. Put as much batter as the pot space can take (Putting enough batter will make the batter not to float as well as evenly distribute the heat so some are not so burnt up), but don't overcrowd.
Now look at your hardwork and enjoy. I made this on Sunday morning after my siblings decided to cancel our breakfast date. After making it , I smiled and served my 9 month the puff puff. OMG!! That is all he ate that day. I called my sister, Chioma, and she was more excited than me who did all the work.
First Batch