New YouTube Series: Chef Would Be Proud

New YouTube series: Chef Would be Proud 

You’ve read my bucket list posts and seen how long my list is. This brings me to today’s blog post. Where I tell you all about how 2021 is the year where I will attempt to complete most of the items on my food bucket list. 

As I sat down and wrote a long list of recipes that I wanted to recreate, I have decided that it would be fun to document my journey on my YouTube channel. Thus my new series “Chef Would Be Proud” was born!

For the past three months, I have watched countless food channels and researched countless recipes, famous chefs, popular recipes, recipes from all over the world really. In hopes to create a long bucket list for me to go over with you. 

My plan is to post one video a week as well as a blog post with an explanation of how the recipe went and how you can make it yourself!

For today, here is what my Food Bucket List looks like:

List of desserts I would like to master:

1. Macaroons
2. Macarons
3. Três Leches cake
4. Cinnamon rolls
5. Homemade bread
6. Apple pie
7. Mini fruit tarts
8. Tiramisu
9. Cannoli
10. Pecan Pie
11. Pineapple Upside-down cake
12. Banana Crumb Cake
13. Lemon Tart
14. No-Knead Dessert Bread
15. Beignet
16. Praline
17. Belgian Waffles
18. Chocolate Souffle
19. Creme Brule
20. All of Disney's Desserts!
21. Pana cotta
22. Whoopie pie
23. Caramels
24. Traditional fudge
25. New York cheesecake 
26. Chocolate dome dessert
27. Nutella crepes
28. Doughnut
29. Scones
30. Round layered cake with buttercream 
31. Brazilian Carrot Cake
32. Brazilian Corn cake
33. Gourmet Brigadeiros
34. The best banana bread
35. Gingerbread cookies
36. Crackle cookies
37. Molasses cookies
38. Sugar cookies with royal icing
39. Baklava
40. Wedding Cake
41. Bananas Foster
42. Yule log
43. Baked Alaska 
44. Buckeyes
45. S’mores
46. Lane cake
47. Swiss Roll 
48. Coca Cola cake 
49. Rice crispy treats 
50. Funnel cake 
51. Pralines
52. Lemon squares
53. Peach cobbler 
54. Old school Fudge
55. Poundcake 
56. Kyle lime pie
57. Blondies
58. Whoopie Pies
59. Brown butter cookies
60. Basque Cheesecake

List of dishes I would like to master:

1. Beef Wellington
2. Jambalaya
3. Gumbo
4. Crawfish Etouffee
5. Corned beef
6. Manhattan Clam Chowder
7. New York Style Pizza
8. Oysters
9. Chicken and Waffles
10. California Style Pizza
11. Fish and Chips
12. Chicago Style Pizza
13. Kalua Pork
14. Spam Musubi
15. Sheperd's Pie
16. Pao de Queijo
17. Feijoada
18. Texas Barbecue
19. Poutine
20. Yellow Pea Soup
21. Sushi
22. Dim Sum 
23. Spring Rolls
24. All the versions of Curry
25. Posole

Restaurant Copycats:

1. Chili’s molten lava cake
2. P.F. Chang’s lettuce wraps
3. Starbucks Caramel Frap
4. CPK BBQ Pizza
5. Dole pineapple whip
6. Chick-fil-A Frosted Lemonade
7. Texas cinnamon butter
8. Olive Garden zupa toscana
9. Red Lobster Cheddar Bay Biscuit:
10. Chick fil a sandwich
11. Levain Bakery Chocolate chip cookies
12. Panda Express orange chicken
13. Crunchwrap supreme
14. Shamrock Shakes
15. Honey Walnut Shrimp
16. Wendy’s Chilli
17. Krispy Creme doughnut
18. Samoa Cookies
19. Wendy’s chocolate frosty
20. Outback coconut shrimp
21. Sonic drive-in cherry lemonade
22. Disneyland corn on the cob
23. Jamba aloha pineapple smoothie
24. Wingers sticky finger
25. Starbucks lemon pound cake

FAMOUS FOOD CHANNEL CHEFS:

1. Paula dean: Yeast rolls

2. Buddy Valastro: Canolli

3.The Pioneer Woman: Cookies

4.Trisha Yearwood: Chocolate pound cake

5. Guy Fieri: Black Bean Corn Salad

6. Bobby Flay: Red velvet cake

7. Giada De Laurentiis

8. Alex Guarnaschelli: cast iron cornbread

9. Sunny Anderson: mini expresso cake with peanut butter frosting

10. Martha Stewart: Pastries

Famous Celebrities Recipes:

1. Meghan Markle's zucchini Bolognese
2. Taylor Swift's chai tea eggnog cookies
3. Matt Damon’s saffron risotto with steamed asparagus
4. Miranda Kerr's gluten-free apple and banana oat muffins
5. Chrissy Teigen's banana bread with chocolate chunks and coconut flakes.
6. Karlie Kloss' "perfect 10 Kookies" 
7. Victoria Beckham's brownies
8. Barbra Streisand’s instant coffee ice cream 
9. Blake Lively’s cauliflower with pomegranate, pine nuts, and parmesan.
10. Sean "Diddy" Combs' recipe for chicken with sweet hickory merlot rosemary BBQ
11. Reese Witherspoon uses her grandmother's buttermilk biscuits.
12. Eva Longoria’s guacamole by adding serrano peppers.
13. Ashley Tisdale's candy-cane sugar cookies
14. Kristen Bell has a recipe for an "everything cookie."
15. Antoni Porowski's tomato, basil, and melty mozzarella baked rice
16. Alicia Silverstone's chocolate peanut butter cups
17. Oprah Winfrey’s classic deviled eggs.
18. Jessica Alba’s turkey meatballs.
19. Kristin Cavallari's chicken enchiladas verdes
20. Paris Hilton’s Lasagna 
21. Kris Jenner’s brownie recipe.
22. Lauren Conrad's blueberry streusel muffins 
23. Chrissy Teigen's Low and Slow Scrambled Eggs
24. Kylie Jenner's Garlic Ramen
25. Beyonce's Guacamole
26. Patti LaBelle's "Over The Rainbow" Mac 'N' Cheese
27. Ayesha Curry's Horchata Brownies
28. Kourtney Kardashian's Mac 'n' Cheese With Turkey Bacon
29. Alicia Silverstone's Pumpkin Pie
30. Gwyneth Paltrow's Strawberry Shortcake Sliders
31. Taylor Swift's Pumpkin Spice Cookies
32. Khloé Kardashian's Chinese Chicken Salad
33. Teresa Giudice's Holy Cannoli Cupcake
34. Kyle Jenners Olive Oil Cake 

35. Martha Stewart’s cheesecake

I also found this amazing website named Taste Atlas https://www.tasteatlas.com/ that has the map of the world and you can look for popular dishes in certain countries. Like in Brazil for example, churrasco is one of their popular dishes.  What do you think? I’m still finishing up and will have specific categories added to this post such as: “Indian dishes” or “famous desserts for each USA state”

See you soon with some delicious recipes!

Christmas Cookie Box

Throughout the year I baked a lot... I baked when I was sad, baked when I was happy, baked because it was a Tuesday, and baked to perfect my craft. So for our Christmas presents this year I decided that baking would be a heartfelt gift! 

It all started with a list of cookies I wanted to add to my box...

Christmas Cookies Box:

1.gingerbread 

2.sugar cookie

3.baklava

4.crinkle cookies

5.chocolate peppermint cookies

6.molasses

7.linzer cookies 

8.buckeyes 

Then I took to the internet to find the best rated and most used recipes. Being that it was my first time making some of these recipes I wanted to make sure I had it down the first try. 

Starting with the Baklava:

a dessert originating in the Middle East made of phyllo pastry filled with chopped nuts and soaked in honey.

We used this recipe from fifteen spatulas  and out of all desserts this is the one I was a little afraid of trying. It’s probably because we eaten so many delicious versions over the years and thinking that it would so hard to replicate. If I’m honest with you, it turned out just like the ones from the restaurants! PS: you do have to wait 8 hours before you can eat but totally worth it!

Then I made an assortment of cookies for the boxes.after making the dough for each cookie I added the gingerbread, molasses, and the sugar cookie to the freezer to set because I feel like it keeps it’s shape better when you let it cool. 

Chocolate crinkle cookies

Molasses rolled in sugar

Chocolate peppermint dipped in white chocolate 

The gingerbread recipe I think is probably one of my favorites and I’m not a gingerbread fan. So that’s saying a lot! I found it on YouTube from the channel “stay at home chef” Rachel is awesome and so is her recipe!

 

My favorite part of baking all these treats was seeing

how excited my family was over these! Their happy faces while eating them brought me so much joy. I loved how they said it was delicious. It is now going to become a Christmas tradition and I hope that for 2021 my cookie game is even better! 

Do you have a Christmas tradition?

Happy 4 months baby Olive

Dear baby Olive,

What an eventful month it’s been! You are now 4 months old and continuing to bring us joy on the daily! 

You’re not going to believe this but you are almost 13 pounds which is a huge difference from your last doctors appointment!

You are getting chunkier by the minute. And we are loving it!

Sitting down is your favorite thing to do. We think that it is because you see your brother and sister better. You look around and get so happy!

I absolutely love dressing you up in different outfits! It’s so much fun and you are the best little doll.

You are obsessed with pandas and I think that mama had something to do with it! You love holding your little panda bear and wearing your panda slippers. 

We celebrated your first thanksgiving this month and you got to hangout with Uncle Rafa and Aunt Nina. You love them! 

Mama has so many wonderful dreams with you in it. I see you growing up. Being the best little girl at sports and dance. We can wait for you to do all the activities.

Right now though, breakdancing seems to be your favorite thing! We will lay you down on your mat one way and you will flip all the over to the other side in a matter or seconds. 

You have this singing owl that we got as a gift for when you were born. We take it every with us because you love listening to those lullabies and they put you right too sleep. PS: you know how mama loves pandas? Well dada is a little obsessed with Owls!

You found your loud voice and you love screaming whenever you get the chance. Our favorite thing is when you are a hungry hippo. You get so mad and cry so loud but Mae the cutest faces!

We aren’t sure what happened but you don’t like your binky anymore. Instead you would rather chew on any toy that you a chance to.

Baby girl the year is almost over and we made it! So many wonderful memories with you!

Thank you for making my life so much better. I’m the luckiest! 

A little throwback Thursday

One of my favorite things to do is find old pictures of me from when I was a little girl... I’m still missing a lot of them but here some of my favorites I’ve found:

My first birthday 1988

Fest junina with my mom and cousins 1990

At the beach with my cousins 1992

                   With my godparents in 1987

Ugh I miss my family in Brasil so much... Thank goodness for all the amazing memories and journal entries I have from all different stages of my life.

Do you have a favorite childhood memory?

Happy 3 months baby Olive

 

Dear baby Olive,

Today you are 3 months old! And your many faces tell your how excited you are to be growing so much. 

We love the fact that you are smiling so big and making faces back at us when we call your name or make funny sounds! 

You are now about 9 pounds and your doctor was happy that you are moving up the curve. We are going to have to check back with her soon just to make sure we are going the right direction with your weight.

Mama can see the difference though... All I have to do is look at your chubby cheeks and tummy to know that your gaining weight.

This month was a little emotional for your mama because we made the hard decision to start formula feeding you more. My milk never came back enough for me to keep feeding you and I could tell you were hungry. And even though I cried a little bit because I was so attached to our bonding time, I know that it is for the best and FED is best!

Your sissy follows me around and wants to hold you every chance that she gets. Sings to you and tells you all about how when you are 3 years old you will both be playing so much! 

Taking baths is still not your favorite but we are working on that. 

When it’s the weekend, daddy and I bring you to our bed and lay you between us. You get so happy and start to wiggle your little body. 

You met your Tia Bia for the first time and you are in love with her. She was able to put you to sleep right away when holding you, and that made you so happy!

Baby girl, mama is still waking up a couple of extra times in the middle of the night to check on you. I love how deep you sleep. I love the fact that people around you can make noises and you are sound asleep.

Oh! After trying a few different formulas it looks like you love the smiths brand. Which is great for mama and dada because formula is expensive and somehow you love the cheap one! 

We just love our growing baby girl so much,