Daring Bakers! Pão de Queijo

I am a college graduate now. I can no longer call this a blog about messing around in a dorm kitchen, because in a few days I'll be moving into an apartment with my own kitchen. College was wonderful, and helped me to discover what kind of person I am, and who I want to be. That process doesn't ever stop, but these four years have been some of the most formative of my life. 

That would be me.

I don't really do goodbyes, and I'm trying not to be sad. The people that matter most in my life will stay in my life. Yes, I'll miss not being able to walk next door or down the street just to stop by and say hello to my friends. That will be hard. And no matter how many times I return to campus, nothing will ever be the same as when I was a student. But that can't be a cause for sorrow. It's time to keep moving forward. And I'll be able to have experiences I never did in school. Dinner parties and movie nights in my apartment, concerts and farmer's markets...

I promise I will keep you updated on my life. The blog is not going to stop. Now on to business...Pão de Queijo. I love saying this. It basically means cheese bread in Portuguese, and is enjoyed in Brazil. I've actually had something like it before, from a mix my sister bought. These are gluten free, crunchy on the outside and gooey on the inside. The secret is tapioca flour, which is actually pretty cheap. Check out the Asian food aisles of your grocery store for a bag that looks like this. Try them out if you please.

This month's Daring Bakers' Challenge took us on a trip to beautiful Brazil! Renata of "Testado, Provado & Aprovado!" taught us how to make Pao De Queijo, tasty cheese buns that make the perfect snack or treat, and that will make your taste buds samba!

Pão de Queijo

250 gm (2 cups) tapioca starch (If you have access to sour tapioca, you can use 250gm (2 cups) of each)
1/2 cup (125 ml) whole milk
1.5 tablespoons (20 gm) butter
1/2 teaspoon  salt (or to taste depending on how salty your cheese is)
1 1/2 cups (125gm) Monterey Jack Cheese (I used a mix of mozzarella and parmesan), coarsely grated
2 large eggs


Heat milk, butter, and salt in a small sauce pan until it comes to a boil. Watch closely as it may boil over. Remove from heat and set aside.
Sift tapioca starch into a large bowl.
Pour the boiled (hot) mixture over the tapioca and start stirring with a fork. The milk mixture will not be enough to form a dough yet. You will have a lumpy mixture, that's what it is supposed to be.
Keep stirring with the fork, breaking down the lumps as much as you can, until the mixture cools down to warm.
At this point, preheat your oven to moderately hot 400° F/200° C/gs mark 6
Add the grated cheese to the tapioca mixture and mix well, now using your hands.
Add one egg at a time, mix with your hands until dough comes together. I suggest you lightly beat the egg with a fork and add little bits until the dough comes together into a soft but pliable dough. You only have to knead it a bit, not as much as you knead a yeasted bread. It's OK if it is slightly sticky.
Form balls with the dough and place them on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper or silicon mat or lightly greased with vegetable oil. If necessary, you can oil your hands to make shaping easier. The size of the balls may vary from small bite-sized balls to the size of ping pong balls. They will puff up quite a bit after baking.
Bake for about 25 minutes or until they just start to brown on the bottom. You may have golden spots of cheese on the crust. Don't over-bake as they will get hard and bitter.
 Serve hot or warm. If you don't want to eat them all immediately, form the rest of the dough into balls and freeze it. 

Applesauce Spice Cupcakes

Blogging when I should be working on my final papers. And blogging something that's probably considered autumnal for that matter. Breakin' alllll the rules. I get the apple thing, apple season is September/October. But I have no idea why cinnamon is considered a fall flavor. Is the growing season for cinnamon in the fall? Whatever. These are the great mysteries of my life (just kidding. Kind of). 

Pretty flowers from a friend !

I have not started freaking out about the fact that I'm graduating. Maybe I will when it's actually happening, but I've never been the kind of person to publicly flip out over big events. Appreciate the moment. There will be plenty of time for the future when the future is the present. And yes, many things will be new, but the most important friends and family will be by your side to make everything less scary. And maybe that's why I'm not afraid. 

These little cupcakes are plain and unassuming looking, but they have a lovely cinnamon and nutmeg flavor, and the texture of something like banana bread (perhaps due to the applesauce, which you can't taste at all). Top them off with cream cheese frosting (the PERFECT amount for this number of cupcakes, which was awesome!) and you've got something that will pretty much please anyone.

Enjoy the rest of today. You'll never get it back! 

Applesauce Spice Cupcakes + Cream Cheese Frosting
from Cooking Classy

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp salt
2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup packed light-brown sugar
4 large eggs, at room temperature
1 1/2 cups unsweetened applesauce
1 Recipe Cream Cheese Frosting, recipe follows 

Cream Cheese Frosting
4 oz. cream cheese, softened
1/4 cup butter, softened
2 cups powdered sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a mixing bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg, set aside. In a large mixing bowl, using an electric mixer, whip together butter, granulated sugar and light-brown sugar until light and fluffy, about 3 - 4 minutes. Add in eggs, mixing after each addition. With mixer on low speed, add in applesauce. Stir in flour mixture and mix just until combined. Divide batter evenly among 20 paper lined muffin cups, filling each cup about 2/3 full. Bake in preheated oven, rotating pan once halfway through baking, for about 19 - 20 minutes until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Allow cupcakes to cool several minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool. Cool completely then frost with Cream Cheese Frosting. Store cupcakes in an airtight container.
 
 Cream Cheese Frosting
Combine all ingredients in a large mixing bowl, using an electric mixer whip ingredients together until smooth and fluffy about 1 - 2 minutes.

Earl Grey + Poppyseed Muffins

Hellohello, happy Cinco de Mayo! Contrary to popular belief, Cinco de Mayo is NOT Mexican Independence Day. It's the day of the Battle of Puebla, an unlikely victory for the Mexicans over the French army, which was considered the best army in the world at that time. Now you know, right? 

I've expressed this about St. Patrick's Day, but I often find it a little weird when people just adopt holidays for the sake of celebrating, without having any connection to the culture or notion of what it's about. It's different when you're making a concerted effort not to just engage in negative cultural appropriation. I'm all for becoming a more enlightened global citizen! 

So instead of being like this, I decided to make Earl Grey and poppyseed muffins this May 5th. I'm not a huge fan of drinking Earl Grey, but I really enjoy baking with it. It imparts a really nice, citrusy/floral fragrance to cakes and cookies and the like. Enjoy these not too sweet muffins with a glazing of marmalade. 

Earl Grey + Poppyseed Muffins
adapted slightly from raspberri cupcakes

3 Earl Grey Tea bags (or about 3 tsp loose tea leaves)
1 cup milk
1 stick butter
2 1/2 cups flour
1 Tbsp + 3/4 tsp baking powder 
3/4 tsp salt 
3/4 cup sugar
1 tbsp poppy seeds
2 eggs, lightly whisked
To glaze or serve: marmalade or apricot jam

Preheat oven to 180°C (350°F) and line a 12-hole muffin/cupcake tin with liners or folded squares of baking paper. Warm the milk and butter until it is nearly boiling in a small saucepan, then add tea bags set aside to infuse and cool. Place flour, baking powder, salt, sugar and poppy seeds in a large mixing bowl and stir to combine. Add milk mixture, butter and eggs and use a whisk to gently combine until smooth. Spoon mixture into the prepared tin and bake for 20ish minutes or until a skewer inserted into the center of a muffin comes out clean. Try your best not to over-bake them as it will dry them out. Glaze with marmalade if you so desire.

Daring Bakers! - Easter Bread

So if you're like, "Dude, Rebecca...not sure if you know this, but Easter was last week," my answer is, yeah, I know, I know! But Daring Bakers has strict posting guidelines and I didn't want to break them. So sorry that you now have to wait until next Easter to make this bread. Or you could just be a rebel and make it whenever you feel like it. I've been known to do that.

Apology: Pictures all taken in ridiculously different lights. 

So Easter. How was yours? I honestly didn't do a whole lot. For one of the first times my school didn't have Good Friday and Easter Monday off, so a lot of people (including me) stayed on campus and kind of just treated it like a normal weekend. It was a little weird, because Easter is such a family time for me. But I just spent it with my second family instead ^__^

So, Easter Bread. Just your basic enriched dough, twisted into a pretty ring and sprinkled with pearl sugar. What's interesting is that the egg you place in the center is raw and actually bakes with the bread. It was a little weird to dye raw eggs, but everything turned out great! These breads were eaten after Good Friday service while watching Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind and having a ten person cuddle pile. Best way to do it. 

The April Daring Baker’s Challenge was hosted by Wolf of Wolf’s Den . She challenged us to Spring into our kitchens and make Easter breads reflecting cultures around the world. Mine is Italian! My mom said my great-grandma would have been proud of me for these <3
 
Easter Bread
from Sprinkle Bakes

1 1/4 cups/301 ml. milk or half and half
1/3 cup/76g unsalted butter
2 1/4 teaspoons instant yeast
Pinch of salt (about 1/16 teaspoon)
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1/2 cup/100g sugar
3 to 4 cups/ 408 to 544g bread flour (approximate)
1 egg
1 teaspoon water
pearl sugar, or rainbow sprinkles
6 raw eggs, room temperature, dyed in rainbow colors
Combine the milk and butter in a small saucepan and place over medium-low heat. Warm just until the butter is completely melted and remove from the heat. Let cool until just warm.
Combine the yeast, salt, eggs and sugar in the bowl of a standing mixer. Add the warm milk and half of the flour. Knead with the dough hook until combined. Add more flour gradually until the dough starts to pull away from the sides of the mixer. You may not have to use all of the flour. Knead the dough about 3-5 minutes longer, or until completely smooth and elastic.
Place the dough in a greased bowl and turn it over once to coat the top. Cover with plastic wrap and allow the dough to rise in a warm place, about 1 hour (
Gently deflate the dough with a fist. Turn it out onto a floured work surface and pat it down slightly so that the dough has an even thickness. Cut the dough into 12 even pieces. Roll each piece to form a 1-inch thick rope about 14 inches in length. Take two lengths and twist them together; loop the twist into a circle and pinch the ends together. Place the circle onto parchment lined baking sheets. Cover the loaves with plastic wrap and let rise again for 1 hour, or until doubled.
Preheat the oven to 350F.
Combine the egg and 1 teaspoon water in a small condiment cup. Using a pastry brush, lightly coat the loaves with the mixture. Sprinkle on the nonpareils and gently place a dyed egg in the middle of each loaf. Bake for 20 minutes, or until the bread is golden and fragrant. Let cool until warm, if patience allows.

Avocado Brownies

Hey hey, long time no post (again). I've been trying to soak up as much of college life as I can before I leave. So I've been...really social lately. Like, more than I've been in my entire life. It's weird, being so social while simultaneously identifying strongly as an introvert. It makes me wonder...if I was constantly surrounded by the right people, would I become an extrovert, feeding off of their positive energy? It's an interesting thought, and one I've never had to entertain. 

 

Okay, so I just zoned out for like ten minutes in the middle of this post thinking about what is important in life, what I'm going to look back on and remember. And what I can in forming these moments for others. Does that make sense? There are so many people I can name who have been catalysts to a better life for me. And I just hope I'm living my life so that others can say the same about me. 

 

None of this has anything to do with avocados. There was just an awesome deal at the store that I couldn't resist. I've had great luck with chocolate avocado cake that I often made in Ireland, so I was hoping these would turn out similarly. I honestly...wasn't super impressed. They were definitely good, but cakier than I typical enjoy my brownies to be, and even with Mexican chocolate, chili powder, and cinnamon, I didn't really taste any heat. Then again, my chili may or may not be pretty old. But hey, make them yourself and form your own opinions! 

Avocado Brownies 
adapted slightly from Muy Bueno Cookbook

1 pinch of sea salt
1 1/4 cup flour
2 tablespoons unsweetened dark cocoa powder
1 teaspoon chili powder
½ teaspoon cinnamon
5 ounces dark chocolate chips
5 ounces Mexican chocolate
1 stick butter
2 smallish avocados, mashed/puréed
1 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup dark brown sugar
5 eggs, divided


Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Butter and flour a 9”x13” pan.

In a medium size bowl combine salt, flour, cocoa powder, chili, and cinnamon. Set aside.
In a double boiler, melt chocolate and butter until smooth, add puréed avocado and stir until completely combined.
Turn off heat and add granulated sugar and brown sugar, stir until combined.
Remove bowl from double boiler and cool to room temperature. Add 3 eggs and stir until combined. Add remaining eggs and stir until combined.
Slowly fold in dry ingredients. Pour into prepared pan and spread out evenly.
Bake for approximately 30 minutes.