Pão de Queijo – literally cheese bread in Portuguese – is a bread-like snack baked with cheese and tapioca starch, or manioc, as they call it. It is a very popular street-side snack found in many South American towns and cities and even in America itself; a commonly loved delicacy due to its chewiness and cheesy flavours.
There are two different ways of baking this snack: either by kneading all the ingredients into a sticky, firm dough and then forming balls out of it, or by blending all the ingredients into a batter-like paste and then pouring it into muffin cups. The former seems to be the more authentic version, which I’ve tried once before. It was really difficult to form perfect round shapes out of a sticky dough! The result: really tasty snacks but which are unfortunately out-of-shape. This time round, I’ve decided to take the easy way out by following a recipe that uses a blender instead of the bare hands. The result: fantastically fragrant and cheesy snacks that look presentable and are really irresistible!
Ingredients:
- Plain milk: 1 1/3 cups
- Olive oil: 2/3 cup
- Egg: 2 (room temperature)
- Tapioca flour/starch: 340g
- Parmesan cheese: 130g
- Salt: 2 tsp
Method:
- Preheat oven at 190 degrees Celsius. Grease a 12-piece mini muffin baking tray with oil.
- Place milk, oil, eggs, tapioca flour, parmesan cheese and salt into a blender.
- Process till mixture becomes a very smooth paste.
- Scrape sides of blender with spatula to mix well.
- Spoon into muffin tray. Bake 15 min till lightly browned.
- Serve warm.
Disclaimers:
- This recipe was kindly adapted from Simply Recipes’ ‘Easy Brazilian Cheese Bread‘.
- If you would like to try out the recipe for the more authentic version, you could refer to The Candid Kitchen’s ‘Cheese Bread And Chimichurri Sauce‘.
Serving:
Makes 36 mini pieces
