How to make Mabuyu candy for a sweet treat this festive season
By Cynthia Lodite, December 25, 2025Add a burst of colour and flavour to your festive celebrations with homemade Mabuyu candy.
Mabuyu is an East African snack made from baobab seeds coated in a sweet, tangy candy shell. Mabuyu, which is mostly common in coastal Kenya, is both nostalgic and irresistible.
Perfect for sharing or gifting, this treat brings a fun twist to your holiday snacks. Here’s how to make delicious Mabuyu candy at home and sweeten your festive season with a perfect double-coat recipe.
First coating:
Ingredients:
2 cups sugar
2 cups water
1/2 cup mabuyu flour
4 cups mabuyu
1/4 tsp chilli powder (optional)
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp ground cardamom (optional)
Red or any colour food colouring.
Method
In a pot, add the water, sugar, salt, chilli powder, food colouring, and ground cardamom and cook on a high-heat stove.
Mix the mixture and let it cook.
Once the syrup starts to cook, you will see lots of bubbles foaming up the pot. Keep mixing and stirring and let it cook. When the syrup starts to bubble down, it means the syrup has started to thicken. Check to see if the syrup is sticky (not too sticky), then add the mabuyu seeds and mix well.
Continue to cook and mix, and then add the mabuyu flour and mix very well.
Continue cooking until the syrup starts to crystallise and starts coating the mabuyu seeds.
Then remove the sugar-coated mabuyu and place them on a big plate (sinia).
Let the mabuyu cool completely. The mabuyu is ready to be eaten, or you can coat it with a second coating of sugar to get the same results as in this picture.
Now for the second coating:
You need:
2 cups water
2 cups sugar
Red food colouring
Mix the above ingredients and cook the same way you cooked the mabuyu in the first coating, but in this case you will use the cooked mabuyu to give it a second coating of sugar.
Enjoy!!!