Perfeita. Light, crispy on outside, chewy on the inside.

I can’t think about this treat without remembering with wry amusement the second time I ever made this. As I recall, I so desperately wanted to make something tasty for my friends, but the only problem was, I was having a Terrible-Horrible-No-Good-Very-Bad Day. As the French would say, “tant pis!” As I now know all too well,  trying to cook something well with a personal storm cloud over one’s head is as bad as trying to stick to a short grocery list while you’re at the store and starving. That day, Pao de Queijo #2 was a flat-out disaster. Allow me to explain.

I gathered ingredients, and set out to mixing them up. Within 2 minutes, I realized something was off. It took me about 5 minutes to have the presence of mind to return to the recipe and re-read it. To my utter dismay, I discovered that I’d misread something very critical. Instead of 100 mL of water, I had added 1,000 mL of water. Now, I live in America and shamefully don’t have the metric system of measurements that almost all of the rest of the world uses internalized, but I immediately realized the seriousness of this error, from my chemistry background, at least: 1,000 mL is 1 Liter.

I had added 1 Liter of water to the dough.

My Nalgene water bottle could have told me as much.
I groaned and looked into the mixing bowl with veritable thin, soupy dough staring back up at me. What to do then????

I tried to rectify the situation as best I could, still marveling at just how I could have possibly managed to swing that error – to get the measurements off by 100 times! I used the rest of the eggs in the house, and an entire bag of flour plus the rest of the flour in the house to eyeball the appropriate thickness of the dough (by this time, the largest mixing bowl I had to use was almost overflowing and then, dumped the whole mixture into a loaf pan, and waited to see what would happen.

Well, although you may have been expecting a miracle, readers, a miracle was not in store. Fear not, though – although the result was not pao de queijo, it was still an edible loaf of bread that was, albeit, rather dense. My friends were great sports and ate it up, mopping up Trader Joe’s Vodka sauce with the hot bread and telling me that they liked it. (I didn’t tell them what it was supposed to have been once upon a time…right away, at least).

And that is the story of Pao de Queijo #2.

With that story in mind, I proceeded with my plan for Number 4, seeing that today, was a normal day without Terrible-Horrible-No-Good etceteras and this was calling from the cupboard, after all. So, pao de queijo it was.

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Here continues the very short, very simple Pao de Queijo, ed. #4. Uneventful except for hunger quenching! Yes.

To make pao de queijo is to make a snack that goes with tea or coffee, or really, any time of day.

I became familiar with this everyday, delicious (you may literally find yourself popping one after the other into your mouth) Brazilian cheese bread ball that is generally made with manioc and tapioca flour on trips to Brazil a couple of years ago.

The great thing about it is that it’s light, crispy on the outside, and soft and chewy on the inside. You can add finely grated cheeses to your heart’s content, too…cut it open and eat little salami and cheese sandwiches…chipotle hummus and mini steak sandwiches…stuff it with jams or preserves…there is a lot you can do. It makes great hors d’oeuvres.  Just the ticket to stave off hunger until a mealtime…

–Baking Pao de Queijo—

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–Cute Cold Sandwiches—

they slice neatly in the center - perfect for sandwiches.

Red Wine Salami and New Zealand Grass Fed Cheddar

–Cute Toasted Sandwiches–

Chipotle Pepper Hummus and Seasoned Steak Mini-Toasted Sandwiches