Green & Whites

These colorful cookies are a link to my own ancestral home, as green and white are the colors of the Nigerian flag, chosen to represent Peace and Nature. They are eaten every year on the anniversary of Nigeria’s independence. Made with pureed white yams, a staple of West Africa, they also have an age-old reputation for aiding fertility, especially the birth of twins.

This isn’t just an old wives’ tale. Central Africa has an unusually high rate of twins—with as many as forty-one twin