A Man of Jannah

Someone posted this on facebook the other day and I thought I'd share it. I'm not sure how authentic it is (anyone?) but it's a really nice story and I was gripped to find out what the ending was just as much as the man in the story!

I won't give away the end you can listen for yourself, leave me a comment though please! =)

Brigadeiros

So, ages ago we had a competition for Sport's Relief at work and we were put into houses had to raise money. I was in Brazil house, so for my contribution I decided to make some traditional Brazilian sweets called Brigadeiros.

I can't remember exactly where I got the recipe but this is how I made them. They turned out really well and were a great success at work, though they took a while to make and were very rich! I think it would be better to make them smaller but I was already using the smallest cups I could find, and you need them in individual cups to stop them sticking together. Also the cups are really expensive and not really reusable so any alternative suggestions would be great!

NB - with these ingredients I think I made about 25 but they were quite large. You might want to cut the quantities in half if you're only trying it for yourself.


1. Take 8 tablespoons (about 113g) of butter and melt in a pan on a low heat

2. Meanwhile take 4 tablespoons of cocoa powder and dissolve in a little water. Make sure you mix till it's smooth and has no lumps.

3. Add 2 cans of condensed milk to the melted butter and start to stir...

4. Add the chocolate and continue to stir until mixed...

5. Keep stirring and do not stop or it will burn! You must keep stirring for around 20 minutes.... you might want to get some friends to help!

6. Your brigadeiro mixture is ready when you run your spoon across the bottom of the pan you can see the bottom and the mixture takes a while to go back. If you take it off too soon you won't have nice round balls as they will collapse.

7. Pour the mixture onto a plate and refrigerate for about half an hour to let it set. I think mine was a little overcooked (I was determined to get nice round balls but I think I got a bit carried away!). It should be a bit thinner than mine when you pour it out.

8. At this point my hands got too messy for me to take pictures but what I did was roll the mixture into little balls and then role each ball in chocolate sprinkles (I used brown and yellow - yellow for the Brazilian flag, sadly I couldn't find any green!).

One issue I found was that they're quite oily because of the butter so if you roll them around too much the sprinkles don't stick very easily and start falling off. Therefore I would suggest to roll them quickly and put them in their little cases and don't worry if they're not completely covered. Trust me, the more you try to cover them the more they'll fall off! Next time I might try just rolling them in cocoa or chocolate powder instead (even though the sprinkles are ore traditional Brazilian). 

So, this is what I ended up with! Let me know how yours turn out!

Long Absence....!!

Woah it's been so long since I posted anything!! I've been kinda busy giving birth, moving house and looking after a newborn... full time job alert!! Well, I didn't exactly 'give birth', unfortunately I had to be cut open as my baby was heading the wrong way - up! And 11 days past his due date there was still no sign of him so I had to take the option I'd been doing everything to avoid!

It wasn't too bad when it finally happened, didn't feel much, worst part was feeling sick during the op and throwing up after, but the scar is pretty neat and doesn't look too horrible, I'm more concerned about the hideous stretch marks and the fact that my stomach, 4 1/2 weeks later, still looks like a deflated stripy balloon. I've been applying vitamin E oil to the scar and Palmer's Cocoa Butter stretch mark cream to my stomach but doesn't seem to be helping much yet! Any tips would be much appreciated!! It's so annoying because I was totally stretch mark free till about 38 weeks then suddenly the underside of my bump was covered! =S

Well, I'm going to put a few more posts up about my baby shower and my birth story in the next few days, hope you like them! xx