Bife Milanesa

So continuing on with the Birthday celebrations for my mom I made her favorite foods. All Brazilian of course. I made black beans, white rice, couve, sliced tomatoes with olive oil drizzled on top of them, and her favorite Bife Milanesa. Which is basically fried beef steak.

So this is what you'll need to make it:

4 Thin steaks
2 eggs
flour
breadcrumbs
oil for frying (I use vegetable oil, sometimes vegtable and olive oil mixed together)
pepper and salt

Take out the steaks and put them on your cutting board. Using a tenderizing mallet beat them senseless....ya I know that sentence made no sense at all, the steaks are dead I know, but I liked typing it.

Then take the steaks and sprinkle salt and pepper and coat them in the flour.

Take your two eggs, crack them open and beat them with a fork. Dip your steak into the egg mixture then coat it with the bread crumbs.

In a small frying pan, put in the oil and heat it up. When it's ready cook one steak at a time.
To test the readiness of the oil you can drop some breadcrumbs into it. If they float up it's ready to go : )

The steaks will cook really fast, seriously I'd say under 4 minutes, so don't take your eyes off them and turn it once. They'll look nice and golden brown.

Also a note on the breading. My mom is a personal fan of using american style breadcrumbs with italian seasoning. It is really tastey. My personal preference though is using panko. But that's up to you.

Here's the finished plate for my mom's birthday dinner : )

Instructional Youtube video to come soon! I took so many pictures while making this.
Also recipes to come with youtube videos:
1) Bife com cebola, beef with onion
2) Couve, sauteed collard greens, (pictured up top)

Birthday Cake!

So today is my mom's birthday. I decided to make her a cake : )

I used a Duncan Hines instant cake mix, I chose French Vanilla.
To top it I used heavy whipping cream and made obviously whipped cream ; )
In the middle of the two layers of cake is tapioca pudding.
I decorated it with strawberries which I cut to look like little flowers. All in all I think it's pretty cute.

To make the whipped cream all you need is:
2 pints of whipping cream
sugar and vanilla extract to taste
Using a mixer whip the cream into glorious submission adding vanilla and sugar gradually.
You can cheat and put the mixer on high that forms it pretty fast but I tried to do it slowly I think it takes longer to break down that way : )
I didn't over sweeten the whipped cream since I believe whipped cream should be a very light and airy treat not over powering

Obviously after decorating the cake it went straight into the fridge for safety : )
I also had way too much whipped cream left...and of course tons of strawberries so I mixed it all together until the concoction turned a light pink color. It's a nice tastey summer treat if you don't want to have that cake.

We had the cake today after it chilled in the fridge. I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out taste wise. It was light and you didn't get that over powering sugary taste you get with other cakes....I seriously feel like I didn't have cake, which is dangerous because then you could eat way more than you originally planned hehe.

I hope you try it yourself
I sure had fun making it

Here's a link to the youtube video for it :   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-17nenzCzI&feature=channel_video_title