This website uses affiliate links that may earn commission from purchases. This is at no additional cost to you.
Day 7 of Cookiemas 2025.
We’re making Mbatata, which are Malawian Sweetpotato Cookies. A lot of the recipes I found said these are from Malawi, but could also be found in Zimbabwe.
I knew I had to try these cookies once I ran into them online because I don’t think we’ve ever had a cookie from this region of Africa yet!
I followed the recipe from Curious Cuisiniere so I won’t be copying it here. You may notice mine look very different from theirs.
I did tell Doug to pick up sweetpotato from the store but he ended up choosing the purple ones. The original recipe is definitely NOT supposed to be purple. It should be a yellow or orange.
I AM curious as to why they’re shaped like hearts. Why not a star, or plain circle? If you know why, please let me know, I’d love to learn!
And it’s fairly simple to make, you’re really just mixing all the ingredients together until you form a soft dough.
Roll it out, cut out heart shapes, and bake!
Step-by-step photos
Again, don’t mind my purple color. I used purple sweetpotatoes instead of regular sweetpotatoes.
Mix together sweetpotato and butter. Add the brown sugar and mix
Mix the dry ingredients: flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon. Then add it to the sweetpotato mixture before adding the raisins.
You should end up with a dough with the texture (but not color haha) on the left. Then portion and cut!
Bake and let cool before enjoying!
Recipe
If you’re looking for the recipe, head over to Curious Cuisiniere where I found this recipe.
More Cookie Recipes
This was Day 7 of Cookiemas! Here’s the other days:
- Caramel Cuts. Really just brown sugar blondies. Very soft and tasty from Doug’s childhood
- Anzac Biscuits. An Australian oat cookie with coconut. I actually had to make this again at the request of my mom.
- Vaniljekranse. Danish Butter Cookies. Like the ones you find in the tins.
- Sagu Keju. Tapioca and Cheese Cookies. Very powdery and cheesy.
- Roccoco. An Italian spice cookie. Full of holiday flavors.
- Korekomki. A Bulgarian ballerina cookie that is like pie crust covered with vanilla sugar.