Cricket cookies

Recently, inspired by news articles documenting commercial sales of cricket flour in the US, a couple of friends from Enakoko and I decided to try and make some cricket cookies. 

For our first batch, we decided to do things very simply - we bought some frozen crickets from a pet shop, ground them in a food processor after thawing and dry-frying them, and added them to a cookie mix. We walked around selling them at the Kushihara cultural festival and managed to sell all 40 bags in under 2 hours! People are always interested to try new things, and it was an unexpected surprise at a festival that normally has known, local products for sale.

But particularly, people were interested in them as a healthy product. And they said they couldn't taste the insects, perhaps because of the strong vanilla flavouring used in the cookie mix. So for our second batch, we used a really simple no-sugar vegan cookie recipe, and we bought fresh, live crickets.

We froze them overnight, and the next day we dry-fried them, as before. These crickets gave off a really nice smell when we fried them! But as soon as we started to grind them in the food processor, the smell became pungent, feral, and not at all pleasant. This second batch had been commissioned and paid for, and we started to worry that we were going to be sending our very first 'bulk order' customers something we wouldn't want to eat ourselves. But we continued regardless with our planned recipe, using maple syrup as a sweetener and hoping the cooking process might miraculously transform them into something delicious.

And, it did! We broke a single cookie in three pieces after taking them out of the oven, and, laughing at our own hesitation, all took a bite in unison. Everything about it was a nice surprise - they really did have a 'cricket' flavour, and, combined with the sweetness of the maple syrup, this made for a very nice cookie!

Now we just need to figure out if we can farm them…