I know you're probably thinking that knowing my love story has nothing to do with our business or Cheese Dots, but if that hadn't happened, I wouldn't be here, that recipe would have never been created and this business would have never started.
I believe in destiny. I believe things happen for a reason. And at the beginning of this story, when I said I didn't choose Canada, I meant it. I think destiny brought me here. I think everything that has happened in my life was meant to lead me here. I will elaborate more on that later on. For now, let’s get back to the story.
I have always loved pão de queijo, but I think my obsession started with a trip to Minas Gerais.
A trip to Monte Verde to be more specific. The bed & breakfast I was staying in had the best pão de queijo I had ever eaten in my life.
Pão de queijo is easy in Brazil, it’s baked at every corner, it’s easily bought frozen to bake at home, but none of them were like this piece of cloud I had just eaten.
It was so good I had to ask for the recipe, but they didn’t make it there, they bought it at a shop.
So, I went to the shop and asked the owner for the recipe. He didn’t want to give it to me really, but his wife, after talking to me about a lot of other things, decided to share. She was so nice she even gave me the tapioca starch.
I was so excited I had the recipe to the best pão de queijo in the world! Except it didn’t work. It never worked. I tried to tweak it, go back to it, change it, read about it, try again and nothing. Nothing I would do made that pão de queijo.
I eventually stopped trying, but that pão de queijo stayed in the back of my head.
Andrew loves food just as much as I do, so when we started dating, we cooked a lot and Brazilian food was always a topic. I would frequently try to cook my favourite dishes when I had the right ingredients.
And two of the things in my cupboard at the time was tapioca starch and the original cheese to make pão de queijo. But I couldn’t fail this time, I had enough ingredients for only one batch. I needed a fail-proof recipe. I found one online and did that.
It was good because pão de queijo is ALWAYS good, but it wasn’t the best and it didn’t come close to that pão de queijo from Monte Verde.
But this was Andrew’s first time, it was his first bite into this cheesy goodness and he liked it. He liked it a lot.
That was when we started thinking about making pão de queijo for real.
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