Brazilian Dessert
PAPO DE ANJO
(syrupy egg puffs)
INGREDIENTS
1 cup water
1 cinnamon stick
3 cloves
1¾ cups confectioner’s sugar
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
9 egg yolks
1 egg white
no-stick spray
1 tablespoon butter
SPECIAL UTENSIL
12-cup muffin tin
electric beater
casserole dish or oven-safe ban large enough to hold muffin tin
Takes 2 hours or more, depending on how long you wait for the syrup to permeate the egg puffs. Makes 12 egg puffs.
PREPARATION
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Add water, cinnamon stick, cloves, and sugar to pot. Cook using low-medium heat for 2 minutes or until sugar dissolves. Stir frequently. Add vanilla extract. Bring sugar water to boil using high heat. Stir constantly. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 5 minutes or until sugar water becomes a syrup. Stir frequently. Remove from heat and cover.
Add egg yolks to first mixing bowl. Beat egg yolks using electric beater set on whip until they are frothy and have doubled in size. Add egg white to second mixing bowl. Beat egg white using electric beater set on whip until egg white forms soft peaks. Fold egg white into first mixing bowl with egg yolks.
Spray muffin cups with no-stick spray. Coat muffin cups with butter. Ladle equal amounts of egg mix in muffin cups. Put muffin tin in casserole dish. Add water to casserole dish until it comes halfway up the muffin cups. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes or until egg puffs become firm and become golden brown. Remove from oven and cool on wire rack for 30 minutes.
Add syrup and egg puffs to mixing bowl. Poke holes in egg puffs with toothpick. syrup. Ladle syrup over egg puffs. Let egg puffs sit for at least 30 minutes to absorb syrup. Refrigerate if egg puffs will sit in syrup for several hours or overnight. Tell adoring guests to use forks when eating this dessert. Tell unappreciative people to syrupy cheese puffs with their hands.
TIDBITS
1) Papo de anjo is an anagram for Joan Pod Poe.
2) Joan could be a descendant of Edgar Allan Poe. It’s hard to say.
3) It’s also quite possible that Joan goes every year to the Bloco de Lama or Mud Festival in Paraty, Brazil.
4) This year the festival was held on February 16.
5) Which is still useful information if you have a time machine.
6) If not, you will have to wait for next year. Plan way in advance! Hotels fill up early as this is a happening event. Where else do you get to smear mud all over yourself and chant, “Uga, uga, uga, rah, rah, rah” with thousands of other mud-covered revelers?
7) Some say the festival honors our caveman/cavewoman roots. Other maintain it pays hommage to the fishermen who would rub mud over themselves to keep mosquitoes away.
8) I don’t know why the fishermen didn’t use bug spray, wear hats with mosquito netting, or simply wear light clothes over every inch of their body.
9) But now, Bloco de Lama, which I hope means blockhead llama in Portuguese, is quite the party, with a blend traditional native music, hip hop, rave, and other musical genres.
10) And dance the night away in your prehistoric bikinis and SpeedosTM.
11) And then go back to your hotel, take a nice, hot relaxing bath, and let the mud gently fall from your body to the bottom of your spacious tub.
12) Boy! I bet housekeeping really hates this festival. Can you imagine having to every day clean dozens of tubs caked with dried mud?
13) No wonder the maids of Paraty, Brazil refer to the tourists as blockhead llamas.
14) Pele, the world’s greatest soccer player, is not a llama. Indeed, no soccer players are.
15) Soccer players do get muddy though when they play on muddy soccer fields. This just happens. It is not done to honor their Neanderthalic ancestors.
16) Indeed mud can be found all over the world, wherever there is dirt and rain.
17) If your town has mud, why not start its own Mud Festival? It’s a guaranteed tourist draw, especially if Joan Pod Poe makes an appearance. Just don’t call her a pod person. She doesn’t like it.
– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef
My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.
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