Brazilian Fudge: Milk Chocolate Brigadeiro - Chef Leticia (2024)

• April 24, 2023

Watch a video of the Brazilian Fudge: Milk Chocolate Brigadeiro HERE.

Welcome to Brazil! The land of brigadeiros! What is that? You might be asking. I am happy, honored, and delighted to introduce you to one of the most iconic recipes of my country: the Brigadeiro.

As the author of three cookbooks, I must confess that I have included recipes for brigadeiros in all my books. The Brazilian Kitchen has a recipe for classic chocolate brigadeiro, coconut, and pistachio brigadeiro. My Rio de Janeiro has another recipe for chocolate brigadeiro. And Latin Superfoods has a recipe for healthy brigadeiro made with coconut-sweetened condensed milk and rolled in cocoa nibs.

I have also written about brigadeiros in several food magazines, including Saveur, Fine Cooking and Bon Appetit.

But the affection for this candy doesn’t stop here. It just keeps growing. This version is made with milk chocolate, and to balance the sweetness, I added a pinch of pink Himalayan salt. The result is just perfect, a balancing act of fudge, chocolate, and satisfaction.

The name comes from a Brazilian political and marital figure, a Brigadier named Eduardo Gomes, who in the early 1900s was admired for his good looks and notoriously loved chocolate. When sweetened condensed milk was invented (in Switzerland) and brought to Brazil, cooks created this fudge using sweet milk and chocolate. Legend has it that he liked it so much the ‘brigadeiro’ was named in his honor. Today, it is a standard in cafés, snack bars, and restaurants nationwide.

The hardest part of making brigadeiro is to know how far to cook: if you undercook it, the fudge will not hold a ball shape and will flatten. If you overcook it, it will taste like toffee, too hard, and not enjoyable. No bueno! Follow the recipe in THIS VIDEO to see what I’m talking about.

A word about the chocolate sprinkles: avoid using ordinary chocolate sprinkles, which are usually made with vegetable fat. For this recipe, I bought this for sprinkles: Cacao Barry Chocolate Decorating Pailletes Fins from Olive Nation, 40.9% Cocoa. The price for this tiny bag came to almost $25, not cheap for such a small amount. Feel free to use other kinds of coverture for the brigadier. The candy will taste delicious if your sprinkle doesn’t taste like fat. Other sprinkle alternatives are cocoa powder (then your brigadeiro looks just like a truffle, nothing wrong with that), toasted coconut, finely chopped nuts, and grated milk chocolate (use a microplane).

Watch a video of this recipe HERE. I used one of my favorite songs (Palco) from one of my favorite Brazilian singer/songwriters, Gilberto Gil.

Stay tuned for more brigadeiro recipes coming up!

Brazilian Fudge Milk Chocolate Brigadeiro

Makes about 30 balls

Ingredients:

1 (14-ounce) can of sweetened condensed milk

2 tablespoons unsalted butter

¼ teaspoon pink salt or kosher salt

2.8 oz (80 g) semi-sweet chocolate (around 60% cocoa solids), chopped

½ cup chocolate sprinkles ( I used Cacao Barry Chocolate Decorating Psilletes Fins from Olive Nation, 40.9% Cocoa)

Procedure:

1. In a medium heavy-bottomed saucepan, place the condensed milk, butter, and bring to a boil over medium heat.
2. When the mixture starts to bubble, add the chocolate and whisk well.
3. Reduce the heat to low, and cook, whisking constantly, until it reaches the consistency of a dense fudgy batter, about 8 to 10 minutes. You want the mixture to bubble like lava towards the end, so it’s important to use low heat or the sides of the pan will burn the fudge. If you undercook, the brigadeiro will be too soft and may not hold its shape; if you overcook it, it will be chewy, more like a caramel candy. You know it is done when you swirl the pan around and the whole mixture slides as one soft piece, leaving a thick burnt residue on the bottom of the pan.
4. Slide the mixture into a bowl. Don’t scrape the pan—you don’t want to integrate any of the burned batter that stayed on the bottom of the pan. Let the mixture cool at room temperature, then chill in the refrigerator for at least 4 hours, or preferably overnight.
5. Using a teaspoon, scoop the mixture and roll each into a little ball about ¾-inch in diameter (about the size of a chocolate truffle).
6. Place the chocolate sprinkles in a shallow bowl. Pass 4 to 6 brigadeiros at a time through the sprinkles, making sure it sticks and covers the entire outside surface. Repeat with all brigadeiros.

Storage: Reserve your brigadeiros in a plastic container covered with a tight lid at room temperature for 3 days or up to 1 month in the refrigerator. Make sure to eat them at room temperature. The brigadeiros won’t go bad after 3 days, but they start crystalizing and tasting like sugar after that.

If you like this recipe, you might also enjoy:

Chocolate Sorbet

Pudim de Leite

Ganache Squares

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Leticia