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Street Snack · Fried Dough

Panikeke (Samoan Doughnuts)

Panikeke (Samoan Doughnuts) — street food from Samoa
📷 Closely related photo — Photo via Pexels/Unsplash — free for commercial use

This humble fried dough ball is eaten for breakfast, sold at bus stops, and gets its name from an English word gone Samoan: "pancake."

Panikeke are small, round balls of deep-fried dough, sometimes made with mashed banana, sold hot from roadside stalls, market tables, and bus-stop vendors across Samoa for just a tala or two. They're eaten plain, dusted with sugar, or dipped in koko Samoa.

Why it's made this way: Deep-frying cheap pantry staples — flour, sugar, coconut oil — turns them into a portable snack that holds up in tropical heat, which is exactly what makes it a natural fit for open-air market stalls.

Roughly what's in it

280kcal
5gprotein
40gcarbs
12gfat
Estimated per typical street-vendor portion — not lab-tested.
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🍺 Vailima 🐟 Oka i'a 🌿 Palusami
Part of World of Street Food — 690 dishes from 118 countries. Something wrong here? Tell us in the comments below. Photo credits.