A dry organic breakfast blend with mango and baobab — sweet, tropical, with a distinct citrus tang behind it. Add water or plant milk, stir, eat.
Baobab, which is worth knowing about
The fruit of Adansonia digitata, the African baobab — the enormous, bottle-trunked tree of the savannah that can live over a thousand years.
Its fruit does something almost no other fruit does: it dries on the tree. The pod hangs there and the pulp inside dehydrates naturally inside its own shell, so by the time it is harvested it is already a dry, chalky powder. Nothing has to be done to it — no drying, no processing, no heat. It is simply cracked open and sieved. That is why baobab powder is one of the least processed dried fruits you can buy.
It tastes sharply citrus — somewhere between grapefruit, sherbet and tamarind — and it is naturally very high in fibre. In West and Southern Africa it has been eaten and drunk for as long as there are records of it.
What the panel says
Per 100 g: 12 g of fibre, 13 g of protein, 729 mg of potassium, 3.3 mg of iron, 0.7 mg of copper and 1.4 mg of manganese, with 18 g of naturally occurring sugars from the fruit.
Under European rules those figures make it high in fibre, high in potassium, high in copper, high in manganese, and a source of protein and of iron — all of which are defined thresholds rather than adjectives.
Because those thresholds are met, the corresponding authorised claims apply: potassium contributes to normal muscle function, to the normal functioning of the nervous system and to the maintenance of normal blood pressure; copper contributes to normal energy-yielding metabolism, to the protection of cells from oxidative stress and to normal iron transport in the body; manganese contributes to normal connective tissue formation and to the protection of cells from oxidative stress; and iron contributes to normal oxygen transport, normal cognitive function and the reduction of tiredness and fatigue.
Those are checkable statements about nutrients that are measurably present. Nothing here needs dressing up further.
How to make it
Roughly 50 g — check the pack — with about 150 ml of liquid.
Let it stand three to five minutes. This is the step that matters. Eaten immediately it is thin and gritty; given five minutes it thickens into something closer to a good porridge.
Overnight in the fridge with plant milk is better still — properly thick and creamy, with the mango coming forward. Coconut milk suits this one particularly well.
Top it with fresh mango if you have it, or banana, or a spoonful of yoghurt. It also blends into a smoothie without complaint.
A note on the tang
Baobab is genuinely sour, and the first spoonful surprises people who were expecting a sweet tropical breakfast. It is closer to a fruit sherbet than to a mango lassi. If you find it too sharp, a chopped banana or a little honey balances it immediately — or use a creamier milk, which softens the acidity.
Allergen and coeliac note
Vegan and organic. Only variants specifically labelled gluten-free are declared as such — check this pack, and ask us if you are coeliac. Check the ingredient list for nuts and seeds if anyone has a serious allergy.
Storage
Cool, dry and airtight, and use within a few months of opening — the ground seeds in the blend contain oils that eventually go rancid.
Iswari
Iswari
