A Sweet Taste of Africa: Sail into a New Recipe Journey [Paperback]

Ivy Newton-Gamble (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 4, 2008

The good news is you can find all the ingredients for the recipes in A Sweet Taste of Africa at your local grocery store. Sugar translates into "sweet" on the tongue of almost every human being. Whether sugar is in the form of honey, sugar cane, beets or refined sugar it is a universal and versatile ingredient. The cakes, pies, cookies, brittles, fritters, fruit salads, beverages and preserves in this book will surely satisfy anyone's sweet tooth. A Sweet Taste of Africa takes you on a culinary voyage though the sweet culinary explorations of the entire continent of Africa. You will find that "sweet is sweet" no matter what continent you happen to live on. The thought of Africa's sweet culinary inclinations may raise your eyebrows at first but as you read and prepare the recipes, the tastes are familiar and delicious. Also, learn simple African words with ten African Languages 101 tutorials.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Ivy Newton-Gamble is a graduate of Florida A & M University earning a B.A. in Sociology. She is also an avid reader and traveler fascinated by people and African cultural traditions. She currently lives in Florida tending to her garden of organically grown fruits and vegetables and is a proud member of Zeta Phi Beta Sorority Inc.

Product Details

• Paperback: 142 pages
• Publisher: AG; 1st edition (November 4, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0615224687
• ISBN-13: 978-0615224688
• Product Dimensions: 9.7 x 7.8 x 0.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,552,282 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Motherland Touch, August 12, 2009

By 

Author O. Wright (Minneapolis, MN USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: A Sweet Taste of Africa: Sail into a New Recipe Journey (Paperback)

Ms. Ivy Newton-Gamble graciously captured many of the sweet recipes from the beautiful continent of Africa in her book entitled: "The Sweet Taste of Africa". She presented these recipes in such a way that made them very easy to understand and follow. In fact, she presented the sweet pastries, beverages, and preserves from Africa in an ideal way for you to enjoy without ever being in Africa. Ms. Gamble was also extraordinarily delightful in her presentation of the countries from which she shared their recipes. I thoroughly enjoyed reading through these mouthwatering recipes and it was indeed a sweet culinary voyage. I owe her a great debt of gratitude.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Nice Recipes, April 26, 2010

By 

Jeanne Ukwendu "BellaOnline.com African Cultu... (Miami, FL) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Sweet Taste of Africa: Sail into a New Recipe Journey (Paperback)

I discovered this book when the author, Ivy Newton-Gamble, started following me on [...]. I saw she had published two African cookbooks - "A Sweet Taste of Africa" a cookbook of African sweets and "A Field of Greens" a cookbook of African soups and stews.

"A Sweet Taste of Africa" has some commonly asked for recipes such as maandazi, fried bananas, and chai masala. There is a wide range of recipes from all over Africa - Algeria, Angola, Central African Republic, Egypt, Ethiopia, Gabon, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Morocco, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, and Uganda. You will also find recipes with an Asian flair from North Africa - not unexpected as there is a very large Asian and also Muslim population in Africa. The whole of Africa is well represented in this cookbook.

With all the really great recipes in this cookbook of African sweets, I was actually disappointed so I am going to suggest a couple of changes for the second edition.

The first thing I noticed when I opened "A Sweet Taste of Africa" was the lack of photographs. There are some black and white photos of daily life in Africa, but there are no photographs of the recipes with the exception of the front and back covers. I was really disappointed. Personally, it's the photos that make me want to try out a new recipe. How do you know how the recipe is supposed to look when you've made it? Did you make the recipe correctly? Adding full color photos to this recipe book would be a huge improvement along with a list of the recipes pictured on the front and back covers.

Something interesting in this cookbook is the list of ten words from different African languages at the beginning of each chapter. What a great idea! However, I don't understand the choice of words used in the lists such as:

them
soup
not
we said
trowel
root
mile
taste
which place
one day

I would prefer to see words pertaining to the kitchen and cooking instead of seemingly random words. Even more interesting is to use the same ten words throughout the book. It would be fun to compare the words across various languages to see the differences and similarities between the languages. Perhaps a word list would include such words as:

Personally, if the above two suggestions were done to this cookbook for the second edition, I think this would be a really great cookbook.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars limited, December 8, 2009

By 

Darlene E. Barry "comma super genius" (Virginia) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Sweet Taste of Africa: Sail into a New Recipe Journey (Paperback)

i like this cookbook, but know it's limited. I didn't expect anything fancy, just the local type fair and thats what it delivers. I don't however find anything terribly exciting in this cookbook