Sunday, December 16, 2007

Holiday Cooking - Brigadeiro

Last night JW of Logan Newcomers hosted a games night and chocolate potluck. I left myself about 3 hours to prepare something. I ran to Allrecipes.com, my favorite online recipe source and found a recipe for a Brazilian treat I'd never heard of, brigadeiro. It has three basic ingredients and looked like it wouldn't take that long to prepare.



I tried coating them in four different ways. 1. Hot Cocoa mix - I thought this would be easy and tasty, but I didn't like how the flavors and textures mixed. 2. Coconut flakes - it was harder to get the mixture to roll on, but the flavor was the best, I'd only attempt this when you're rolling the candy as it's still slightly warm. I left half of what I made in the pot overnight and rolled them this morning in 3. Powdered sugar - easy, elegant. 4. Powdered sugar mixed with cocoa powder - probably the best combo of flavor, coating ease and appearance. As long as you don't let the warm candy balls touch, you wouldn't actually need a coating, it develops a bit of a shell as it cools, but for appearance and taste, I would add some sort of coating.



I did couldn't find mini cups at the store yesterday, just pastel regular size, so I arraigned them as a trio in the cups. "Trio" makes me think of Top Chef. They do trios all the time.



I didn't make it to the game night last night because some fellow newcomers and I decided to hit up another party first. You know, just pop in, say hi, meet some new people. But by the time we left, the game party was over. So I have a plate of candy in my fridge staring at me.



Candy review: Easy of making: 8 out of 10 (rolling by hand is a little time consuming, but I was able to get a batch and a half made in under three hours including the trip to the store). Appearance: 10 out of 10 (it's so easy to make these look very elegant, and vary the appearance). Taste: 7 out of 10 (tasty enough, but no English toffee or pralines).

3 comments:

Brook said...

P.S. Some of my coworkers and friends thought these were awesome. They would have given them a higher than a 7 on taste. One coworker didn't seem to think much of them.

mOOwalk said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
mOOwalk said...

I confess, the Brazilian secret is the condensed milk....ours is just way different from yours up there (I do wonder why).....no doubt it's one of our favorites at a kid's party, and girls down here would die for a pot full of it (yummy!).
Ah, we roll them on what we call "Granulado" (take a look at this: http://farm1.static.flickr.com/22/33222986_11d95e30ba.jpg).
XOXO.