Brazilian cheese rolls

I must have been about 8 years old and it was one of those happy days when we went to the city centre. Even though I can’t recall anything that we did while we were there, I remember that on the way back to the farm my dad parked his yellow Ford 350 in front of the “São Roque” bakery and went in.

A few minutes later he came back to the truck with a small brown paper bag and told me: I got you a “pão de queijo” (Brazilian cheese roll). My concept of a treat at that age was something sweet, so without any excitement I told him: I don’t like that! A bit surprised, my dad looked at me and said: gosh daughter! Have you ever tried pão de queijo? I shook my head saying no. Then, he said, try it!

It didn’t look very appetising but my dad was eating his pão de queijo with so much enjoyment that I decided to give it a try and it was love at the first bite!

Pão de queijo is a Brazilian passion… It can be eaten by itself at any time of the day but the preferred meals to have it are breakfast and afternoon tea. You can have them with jam, with pulled chicken stuffing or even with “requeijão” or “Catupiry” which are local types of cream cheese. Yes, we Brazilians love cheese so much that we eat cheese rolls with cheese!

There are many recipes for Brazilian cheese rolls and this one I developed after moving to London because we don’t have Minas cheese here (the cheese used in the original recipe), so I tested different types of cheeses to find the ones that would give the most delicious flavour and texture. After lots of trial and error, this has now become my favourite Brazilian cheese roll recipe. I hope you will try it because it tastes delicious!

Level of difficulty

Medium

Course

Bake |  Breakfast |  Treat

Serves

4

Preparation time

30 minutes

Cooking time

30 minutes

Ingredients

• 300 g tapioca starch
• 200 ml of whole milk
• 100 ml of sunflower oil
• 2 eggs
• 100 g Gouda cheese
• 50 g of Parmesan cheese
• 1 teaspoon of salt (4 g)

Preparation

1. Add the milk, oil and salt to a medium saucepan and bring to boil over high heat.
2. Turn off the stove, remove from the heat and add the tapioca starch gradually, stirring vigorously until it is perfectly incorporated into the liquid.
3. Let the mixture rest for about 10 minutes allowing it to cool down a bit. Meanwhile beat the eggs and finely grate the cheese.
4. Add the beaten eggs and grated cheese to the mixture and keep on mixing all ingredients until they are perfectly incorporated to the dough. The resulting dough will have a soft and wet consistency, similar to a choux pastry.
5. Grease your hands with a little sunflower oil and roll 1 up to 3 tablespoons of dough, depending on the size of roll that you want.
6. Place the rolls on a parchment-lined oven tray, with a minimum distance of 2 fingers between them.
7. Bake the rolls for about 30 minutes in a preheated oven (180 ° C) until golden and crispy.
8. Allow them to cool down for a few minutes but serve while still warm.

Tips

• You can freeze the unbaked cheese rolls and bake them just before serving for a delicious breakfast or afternoon tea. There is no need to defrost them before baking. Just pop them straight into the preheated oven!
• Once baked, you can’t freeze the cheese rolls as they won’t have the same texture and flavour once defrosted.
• If you are able to find the sweet tapioca starch and the sour tapioca starch in Brazilian shops, use half amounts of of each type for a perfect cheese bread dough. If you can’t find those varieties, don’t worry, you will still have a delicious cheese roll using the standard tapioca starch found in most places.