Brazilian Cheese Rolls {Gluten Free}

Friday’s are our “photo shoot” days at OGT, which basically means that Britta, Kaitlyn and I get together and try to cram as many posts as we can into one day! The whole house becomes a mess (especially the kitchen) as we create and photograph our various projects, but at least it is limited to the one day, instead of EVERY DAY! (At least that’s how I try to look at it!) :-)

This past Friday Kaitlyn made up these cheese rolls that she’d recently had at a friends’ house and I could NOT stop eating them! I’m so excited she’s sharing them today because whether you eat gluten free or NOT, they are DELICIOUS!

Kaitlyn writes:   There are a couple of Brazilian steak houses not too far from where I live in Utah. My husband loves these restaurants because they are basically all you can eat meat feasts – but my favorite things to get are the flavored lemonades and the cheese rolls! Oh the cheese rolls!! Jill shared a recipe for Brazilian lemonade a while back and today I’m sharing a recipe for the Brazilian cheese rolls.

These little morsels of melted cheese goodness are called Pao de Queijo and they’re made with tapioca flour which means they are naturally gluten free! Yay! But using tapioca flour instead of wheat flour means they definitely have a different texture than regular bread. Expect them to be more chewy than fluffy.

I can’t take credit for this recipe. I got it from my good friend and neighbor, Ashley, who got it from our other neighbor, Becky. Was that complicated enough for you? Ashley comes from Brazilian ancestry and also has a Brazilian exchange student living in her home. She told me this is her favorite recipe for Pao de Queijo. I figure if she likes it, it’s got to be pretty authentic! ;-)

She invited Erik and me over for a full Brazilian meal a few weeks ago and when I found out how easy this bread is to make I knew I had to give it a try.

Pao de Queijo: Brazilian Cheese Rolls

Yields 24 rolls

• 1 large egg
• ½ cup milk
• ¼ cup canola oil
• 1 cup tapioca flour
• ½ tsp kosher salt
• ¼ cup medium cheddar cheese
• ¼ cup parmesan cheese

A couple of tips on the ingredients…

I know a lot of people don’t like to eat canola oil so I tried a batch with coconut oil and they turned out great! My husband thought the coconut flavor was way too strong but both Jill and I thought it was subtle enough that it didn’t change the overall flavor too much.

There is no substitute for tapioca flour. It’s just what you have to use to get the right texture and consistency. I used Bob’s Red Mill Brand, which you can usually find in the gluten free or organic section of most major grocery stores.

Directions:

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.

Put your egg, milk, oil, tapioca flour and salt in your blender and blend until smooth. I used my trusty Blendtec and mixed it with the “whisk” function. One whisk cycle was just enough to get the batter perfectly mixed.

Next, add the cheese and pulse 2 times. You’re not trying to pulverize the cheese. You just want to incorporate it with the rest of the ingredients.

Immediately pour batter into a mini muffin tin. If you aren’t using a non-stick pan, spray the pan lightly with non-stick spray before adding the batter.

You’ll want to fill each well about ¾ full. The batter is very thin so pour slowly! You can see in my picture that some of my wells are a little too full because the batter came out so quickly. At ¾ full you should be able to fill 24 wells.

Bake 10-15 minutes until your rolls are just barely golden and starting to puff.

Remove from oven and allow rolls to cool for a few minutes in the pan.

The original recipe said to bake for 15-20 minutes. I cooked one batch for 15 minutes and they were very overdone. You can see from the picture above that they puffed up so much that they were totally hollow in the middle and very crispy. They actually still tasted fine but weren’t quite the right texture.

I cooked the next batch for about 8 minutes. I thought they tasted great but they deflated quite a bit as they cooled. If you like them puffier I would cook them about 10-12 minutes.

Now dig in before they get cold…because the recipe I was given says they don’t reheat well.

But I wouldn’t worry, they’re so good that you probably won’t have leftovers anyway. ;-)