Bruenslis in Bokassa's Bangui

  

Emperor Jean Bedel Bokassa

                    By Andre Jaquet

By some quirk of fate my first duties at the Department of Foreign Affairs Head Office included spreading South Africa’s influence in Francophile Africa. This meant intensive shuttle diplomacy, often at inconvenient times, to try and achieve the impossible for a country under apartheid rule. One Christmas in the 70’s I was stuck in the Central African Empire on a hush-hush mission to deliver the latest token of the South African taxpayer’s generosity. This was a sort of Christmas present for Jean Bedel Bokassa, who had crowned himself Emperor.

Bokassa had been foisted on the South African taxpayer by the French government that was tired of funding Bokassa’s Napoleonic dreams. Paris managed to sell the idea of palling up to Bokassa to the South African Cabinet by pointing out that this was a useful means for South Africa to start gaining acceptance in Africa.

Now anyone with distant Swiss ancestors will tell you that Christmas is not Christmas unless you make two full cake tins of Bruenslis. Forget mince pies or kissing under the mistletoe, spurn Christmas pudding with brandy butter and throw the fatted goose or whatever to the cats. As a non-Brit, I am not excited by those reminders of British colonization and I tolerate the traditional South African Christmas braai only because it gives me a good excuse to drink large quantities of Cabernet Sauvignon. But give me a Bruensli and I am all yours.

“What on earth are Bruenslis?” you ask. At this stage, I should warn diabetics to take an extra dose of insulin before reading the following quotation from my mother’s hand-written recipe book:

BRUENSLIS: CHOCOLATE BISCUITS: BONBONS BRUNS

Ingredients:

250gr of chopped almonds

            250gr of sugar

            2 whites of eggs

            80gr cocoa powder

             4 gr cinnamon.

Mix well. Let the dough rest. Roll out with sugar, cut out.

Oven: mild. Just dry the biscuits out.

That sounds easy, unless you try to bake those cookies on a hotplate in an un-air-conditioned hotel room in the middle of the tropical hot season in Bangui, capital of the Central African Empire.

Having bowed and scraped to the Emperor, I returned to my hotel from the palace in the jungle and I somehow managed to put together three whole pseudo-Bruenslis using sugar, Milo and peanuts.  Mind you, I had to eat them with a spoon but I suppose that tradition deserves some sacrifices.

Bruenslis were also a wonderful comfort when I was on Operations Room duty at Head Office one Christmas eve. There was absolutely nothing to do because all colleagues, whether on posting abroad or at home, were doing the sensible thing. That year I fielded just one phone call from a journalist at midnight. The conversation went something like this: “Hello (Munch) this is Foreign Affairs. (Crunch). How can I help you? (Swallow). No, we have not invaded the Comoros Islands over the weekend. Goodbye and a merry Christmas to you too.”