Rosemary Bread

Today I bring you a Rosemary Bread, because the region where I live in Brazil has a strong Italian influence, because rosemary grows pretty much everywhere in the world, and, above all, because is one of my favourite herbs and one that I always have at home.

Ingredients:
500 gr flour
10 gr biological yeast
2 tsp. olive oil
1 1/2 tee spoon salt
4 tsp. rosemary chopped
250 ml of warm water


Mix the flour with the salt and with the rosemary. Make a hole in the centre of the flour mix and add the olive oil and, bite by bite, the yeast dissolved in the warm water. Mix carefully and work the dough. Form a ball and live it to grow in a covered bowl. Bake in a hot woven in a rectangular tray.

The first slices were eaten still worm with the butter melting down. So good!!!

Hope you like it!

Pineapple and Coconut Cake

One of my favourite drinks during my teens was Piña Colada. Even as a soft drink, it had that tropical aura that brought me to a holidays and exotic islands ambience. All that just for the price of a drink!

That's why, for me, and I think for many people in my generation, the pineapple and coconut flavours combined have that magic! So, why not try this winning combination on a cake? I'm sure this is not an original idea, but this recipe come to me from no more inspiration than the one given by a cocktail that I drunk twenty years ago!

Ingredients:
4 eggs
300 g sugar
150 ml vegetable oil
150 ml pineapple pulp
50 g grated coconut
250 g flour with baking powder
Beat the eggs with the sugar until you have an homogeneous mixture. Add the oil and continue beating. Next add the pineapple pulp (I reduce the fruit pieces to a pure with the hand mixer) and the coconut. Finally, add the flour, mixing carefully but without beating. Cook in medium oven in a pan greased and dusted.

Good appetite!!

Curd Swet Breads

Food Blogs just pop up like mushrooms! There are so many and so many good ones that sometimes I wonder if there is room for one more. And yet, I try and here I am, hoping to enjoy myself and please you all, foodies and frequent blog readers.

For a few months I've been working on a blog in Portuguese - Cravo e Canela  Uma Cozinha no Brasil. But the fact that I have readers from odder countries make me decide to try to do it in English! I have presented some recipes in English for Bread Baking Day monthly events, and those - like the Curd Sweet Breads - will, probably, be the first recipes to be featured here.

When I saw the Bread Baking Day #40 announcement I set to myself the challenge of participating and show some recipe from my country – Portugal – and from my region – Alentejo! Since it was supposed to bake a bread with curd, I thought that would be nice to bake some Costas de Requeijão. Costas is a typical sweet bread from Alentejo, that can be simple, stuffed with a fruit marmalade or have curd included in the dough.

 Ingredients:

500 g flour
100 g sugar
100 g butter
2 eggs
250 g curd
Biological yeast
4 table spoons of milk
½ tee spoon of cinnamon

In a large bowl, mix the flour, the sugar and the cinnamon. Make a small cavity in the centre and then add the yeast dissolved in slightly warm milk, the butter and the curd in small pieces. Mix carefully with the dry ingredients.  Next, add the eggs, previously battered. Mix the dough until it doesn’t stick to your hands anymore. Live for about an hour in a covered bowl, to grow. Make small breads and take them to the oven (200ºC) for about 15 minutes.

It can be eaten simple, or with jam or cheese. I made a quick strawberry jam to eat with the first coming out from the oven, will I was waiting for the last tray to cook!

Hope you like it!