Pão de Queijo for the New Year

There are a lot of New Year superstitions.  A common theme, is about round items, or wearing clothes with dots.  I guess the dots are meant to symbolize money for the new year.  Now that I think about it, I should have gone for rectangles, as I prefer my money in bills!  Hahaha...
In our home, my mom always prepares different kinds of what will pass as round fruits. I'm not sure if there's a certain number of fruits you must try to prepare.

Our fruit platter to welcome 2012.
I love how we think mangoes are round in this house!
But then, Philippine mangoes are always yummy, so no complaints here.

Jumping on the let's welcome the New Year with all-things-round bandwagon, I decided it was the perfect time to make Pão de Queijo, literally translated to mean Cheese Bread, which is a typically Brazilian snack.


When we were in Brazil, our hotel in São Paulo served freshly baked Pão de Queijo as part of the breakfast buffet every morning.  We used to go for the ones lighter in color, because it looked like Pan de Sal, but tasted like it had gooey cheese inside.

Pão de Queijo we bought from the Rio de Janeiro airport before flying back to Singapore

Don't get too impressed now.  We are NOT making Pão de Queijo from scratch... Though my instinct is always to say that I'm sure if I put my mind to it, I would be able to make this from scratch too.

The mix is readily available in most supermarkets...
...in BRAZIL!  hahaha... yup.  NOT HERE!

My teammates in Brazil were the ones who told me that on their previous trips, they were able to buy the mix and it was very easy to make, so I bought several packs to try it and some to give away.

The instructions on pack come in Portuguese so I just used my trusty friend: Google Translate

You just pour the mix in a medium bowl...

add cold water...

and eggs...

then you start kneading it for three minutes.
This part feels kind of icky... don't worry, I washed my hands before I started.

you just need to keep on kneading "until smooth and homogenous - according to google translate"

once all the liquid has been absorbed, you can start rolling them into balls

Then just put them on a baking sheet.
The photographer filming our instructional video is included in the background.

The photographer is snacking while I was working!

Make sure you leave enough space so they won't stick to each other.

Pre-heat the oven for 10 minutes, then bake for 40 minutes

We did a taste test when ours started cracking (at 25 minutes).
It was really yummy... just the way i remembered them.

The finished product

I think you can bake them longer to get them more brown,
but we wanted them gooey inside so we did not want to risk over baking it.

Does our photographer/ taster look like he likes it? 

Well, he ate a lot. Hahaha... JUST SAYING.
Fine. Maybe we helped him a bit.

Note to self: next time I find myself in Brazil, I should buy more Pão de Queijo mix.  We have one last pack I hoarded for my Singapore home.

Just a last note on New Year's day beliefs. I learned something new this year.  My mom who visited her aunts this morning said that they told her you need to eat misua on New Year's Day for luck so they sent us Misua for lunch and the Sio Mai to go with it. 

I love the dry Chinese Misua Noodles... so I hope we do this every new year!
Eating Misua with a hard boiled eggs is normally a Chinese Birthday Tradition for long life. 

The really yummy Sio Mai.

That's all folks!  We're going on a Milk Tea run now, for more round things to ingest!