What is brigadeiro cake? The best chocolate cake you'll ever have in your life. There was a sister in Ala Santa Tereza who made this cake every time we had a baptism in her ward. She made it for my 22nd birthday. It's also labor intensive if baking is not your thing. But you know what? It's the perfect thing if you have The Big Sads.
Here's how I made it.
The chocolate cake doesn't matter. Make the box or from scratch chocolate cake mix of your choice. If you want to be authentically Brazilian, make a scratch cake in a bundt pan. But this is your cake. Do what makes your soul happy. I did Pillsbury's Devil Food and it was fine.
The real star of the show here is the ganache-style topping. Make the topping once the cake is done baking and has cooled completely.
Ingredients:
- 1 can of sweetened condensed milk
- 1 can of table cream, which might also be called "media crema" at your Latin market/aisle of choice
- 3 tablespoons of unsalted butter
- 5 spoons of Nescau powder. It's Brazilian Nesquik. I taste the difference between it and American Nesquik, so I think it matters. But if it doesn't matter to you, use American Nesquik.
- Chocolate sprinkles sufficient to cover the entire cake surface
- The ability not to walk away from this the entire time it's cooking.
Directions:
- Use a saucepan over medium low heat on the stovetop. The wider the bottom of the pan is, the easier this will be. I've always used a stainless pan.
- Add the sweetened condensed milk, the Nescau, and butter to the pan. Combine by stirring with a rubber spatula.
- Continue dragging your spatula to keep the mixture from burning. It takes forever. If it's starts to violently bubble, your heat is too high.
- Once it pulls away cleanly from the bottom and it takes a second or two for the sides to come together again when you drag the spatula through it, add the table cream and mix thoroughly. You're looking for a thick chocolate spread similar in color and consistency to warm Nutella.
- Spread the chocolate paste onto the cake. The spread doesn't need to be completely cool when you do this. It actually helps if it's still a bit warm because it spreads better and the sprinkles stick to it better.
- Cover every exposed surface of the spread with chocolate sprinkles.
If you're doing a layer cake, there's enough of the chocolate spread to do a layer inside an 8 inch cake. I didn't do that because I went into goblin mode and dumped all my cake batter into one 8 inch pan, so mine just has extra spread on top. It piles on just fine.
If you're like me and you do this too, you'll notice after 30 minutes of baking that your cake is still molten in the middle. Drop your heat to 340°F for another 15 minutes. If it comes out domed, use a bread knife to cut off the dome, turn it out, and make the bottom the top.
