This month, Around the World in 12 Dishes is visiting Brazil. When I asked Lizzie what she learned about Brazil, the first thing she said was, "they make good chocolates!" Why yes, they do. The food we chose for Brazil was the brigadeiro, a popular chocolate candy. They were fun to make and definitely yummy.
I followed the recipe I found on Allrecipes. (Click here for the brigadeiro recipe.) The recipe was simple and had only three ingredients. But, like all candy recipes, there are some tricks for success. Make sure you cook the ingredients over the stove until it is thick and comes away from the bottom of the pan. You can see in the above picture that when I poured the chocolate mixture into a pan to cool, it stayed in a big blob. I also popped my pan into the freezer for a quicker cool down. If you try to make the balls while the mixture is too warm, you end up with a sticky mess.
Traditional brigadeiros are covered in chocolate sprinkles, which I didn't have in my cupboard. Instead we rolled out candies in cocoa. The girls took over the candy making. They made the balls and rolled them in the cocoa. While they were making the candy, we watched a few on-line videos to learn about Brazil.
National Geographic Kids is a fantastic resource for kid-friendly information about the different countries of the world. We viewed the photos and the map and also watched the short video on the site.
When we had a good overview of Brazil, we watched this video on YouTube called The Wild Life in Brazil to learn about the rain forests and the animals that live there.
Brazil was a fun country to learn about and we hope to learn more about the rain forests. Would you like to participate? Here's how:
Welcome to "Around The World in 12 Dishes". We will be taking you on a journey around the world, (loosely) following in Phileas Fogg's footsteps, exploring 12 different countries with our children, by cooking 12 dishes with them. One for each country visited.
The world is such a wonderfully diverse and colorful place. Our children see maps, flags and books. They see postcards and maybe they see films about the world.. but let's really bring it to life through food! Taste and smell don't often get explored, we think this would be wonderfully fun and interesting for you and your children.
Not only is it an exciting and different way to learn about cultures, but cooking with children brings a host of benefits - from numeracy to science. How can you beat that?
Adventures In Mommydom, Creative Family Fun, Domestic Goddesque, Glittering Muffins, Here Come The Girls, Juggling with Kids, Kid World Citizen, Kitchen Counter Chronicles, Mermaids' Makings, Montessori Tidbits, Mummymummymum and The Educators' Spin On It have come together to help you on your food journey and will each cook a dish with our children and post about it - to help inspire you to have a go! Then go out there, cook, blog, and join in the linky fun! Check out the other great posts as well!
Around the World in 12 Dishes
We had started our journey the same way Phileas Fogg did in London, UK, and now are arriving in Brasilia, capital of the biggest South American country Brazil.!
March 4 - First country was the UK
April 1 - The second country was Sweden
May 6 - The third country was Russia
June 3 - The fourth country was India
July 7 - The fifth country was Japan
August 5 - The sixth country was Australia
September 2 - The seventh country was French Polynesia
October 7 - The eighth country was Mexico
November 4 - The ninth country is Brazil!
How to join the fun!
The only mandatory part is the dish, the rest is all up to you, we just thought it would be fun and more concrete to the kids as to why we are making a unusual dish.
Cook a dish from Brazil: The goal is to explore this country through FOOD and activities if you wish. Make a typical dish (sweet or savoury) from the country with the kids, take photos and have fun!
Typical dishes: Feijoada, Baião de dois, Sarapatel, Galinhadaplus Queijadinha, Moqueca de peixe and Bridgardeiros.
Print your passport: Click here to download, comes with space for a photo of the child with the dish. Here is a little cover for it if you wish :)
Color a placemat: Once colored/painted or whatever other way you want to do this, you can laminate it or put it between clear contact paper to use it over and over. Great conversation piece for you and your kids. Click here to download it.
Make a craft: you can make a country related craft with the kids [optional!]
Fun fact: Brazil has one of the New 7 Wonders of the World, the Christ Redeemer statue, located in Rio De Janeiro.
Share with us: Our Brazil challenge starts on November 4th and will remain open for a year, so attach a link to your blog to enter the linky party or go to the comment section and post a photo together with what you did together with your child(ren).
Pinterest: We will add your photos to a "Around the World in 12 Dishes" Pinterest Boards (one for the dishes, one for the crafts) you will be a great source of inspiration for everyone :)
Are you a blogger? Let your fans know about the challenge and grab our cute lil’ button to share it on your blog.
Please check out our partner blogs and their Brazil ideas: Adventures In Mommydom, Creative Family Fun, Domestic Goddesque, Glittering Muffins, Here Come The Girls, Juggling with Kids, Kid World Citizen, Kitchen Counter Chronicles, Mermaids' Makings, Montessori Tidbits, Mummymummymum and The Educators' Spin On It
If you do this, we’d LOVE to see a photo of it. Email it to us or post it on our Facebook page. We’d love to do a Facebook album, a Pinterest board and a page of your creations :)
Please link up your Brazilian dish and/or craft in our linky below, we would love to see it!
If you liked what you read, I would love it if you would join me on Facebook and Pinterest!