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!