Forays into Brazilian Baking - Part I

I have discovered that there is a reason why I am a bureaucrat and not, oh, say a caterer specialising in Brazilian sweets....

It all started a few weeks ago, when we began preparing for our Carnaval Bash. My goal was to serve a totally Brazilian menu. I started trolling my cookbooks and the internet several weeks in advance and within a few days, the menu was set: brigadeiro (cannot believe that wikipedia has an English entry for this totally Brazilian chocolate/condensed milk chocolate ball), beijinhos (whoa - wiki has this coconut ball sweet listed as well!), docinhos de uva (take that wiki - I have something that you don't with these pastry covered grapes), bolo de macaxeira (cassava cake) and an eggplant and pepper salad being the show stealers. May the preparations begin!

Docinhos de Uva
First we tried to make the docinhos de uva. A simple recipe, found in abundance on the net. There are only five ingredients -

1 can sweetened condensed milk
3 Tablespoons powdered milk
1 teaspoon butter
grapes
crysalised sugar (preferably green!)

- and four steps -

1. Mix the condensed milk, powdered milk and butter in a pan and place on low heat until the mixture comes to a low boil and starts to lift off the bottom of the pan when stirred. Stir constantly.
2. Remove from the heat, let cool.
3. Once cool, shape the mixture into small balls and then wrap around each grape.
4. Roll in the crystalised sugar and place in individual mini pastry cups.

- Pretty easy eh? Claro! -- provided you read the recipe properly! Our main error was adding, well, a 1/2 pound of sugar to the condensed milk concoction, when in fact we were actually supposed to roll the balls in the sugar at the end of the process. We all know that Brazilians have sweet teeth - but really, it was too much sugar! Opa! Somehow, though, people still seemed to really like them, so I imagine that were they to be made properly next time, they would be truly wonderful.

Next stop: Bolo de Macaxeira....