Benny cake

Benny, the sesame seed

In the Bahamas, sesame seed is called benny. The electronic Dictionary of Bahamian English traces the word to West Africa, citing Wolof and Bambara words for sesame. Its earliest example dates from 1835, and one from 1918 describes benny as a grain much finer than corn. The dictionary also notes a saying from Nassau, to run one’s mouth like parch benny, for someone who talks a lot.

Similar words for sesame are found elsewhere around the Atlantic. Wikipedia’s article on sesame notes that benne, first recorded in English in 1769, comes from the Gullah word benne and ultimately from Malinke, and that sesame reached colonial America with enslaved West Africans. In South Carolina, the seeds give their name to benne wafers, thin sesame biscuits most associated with Charleston, which Wikipedia describes as having African origins.

Seeds, sugar and patience

The method is short. The Government of The Bahamas includes peanut or benny cake among its traditional Bahamian recipes: sugar is heated in a pan until it liquefies, the peanuts are stirred in and the mixture is shaped, then left on a baking sheet to set. A note adds that benny can replace the peanuts.

Chef’s Pencil describes the benny version: the seeds are heated until brown, brought to the boil with sugar and salt, and dropped into rounds, and the hardest part is waiting for them to cool and harden. The Dictionary of Bahamian English defines benny cake as sesame seed candy and quotes a 1934 account of it as made from the seeds and boiled sugar cane, left to harden into something like a candied cereal.

Wikipedia’s article on sesame places Bahamian benny cakes among the Caribbean’s sesame bars of sugar and white seeds, which resemble peanut brittle and are sold in shops and on street corners.

A sweet for Christmas and every day

Chef’s Pencil, which lists benny cake among the most popular Bahamian desserts, notes that it is frequently eaten at Christmas but can be found all year, because it is simple to prepare.

Tourism Today, a news site of the Bahamas Ministry of Tourism, named it in 2025, with conch fritters and guava duff, as classic Bahamian fare offered with a hotel’s bed-and-breakfast package on Grand Bahama.

It is also a home-made sweet. Interviewed by The Tribune in 2019, Dorcas Bowler, then Director of Libraries, who grew up in Delectable Bay on Acklins, remembered that other islanders made coconut cake and benny cake, and that her mother made them too, along with candies of her own.

One of the world’s sesame sweets

Benny cake belongs to a large family. Wikipedia describes sesame seed candy as a confection of sesame seeds and sugar or honey pressed into a ball, bar or wafer, popular across East Africa, the Middle East, South Asia and East Asia; Greece and Cyprus have pasteli, and Trinidad and Tobago has the benne ball, a very hard, ball-shaped sesame sweet.

In Emblem World, benny cake sits in the Bahamas dessert collection, where people discover and rate local food, drink and music.