Be ready to host friends again with Bolo de Laranja (orange cake) - The Gazette: Eastern Iowa Breaking News and Headlines

When traveling abroad, Americans are often surprised to find that, in many countries, dinnertime is usually much later than what they’ve come to expect in their everyday lives.

In my home country of Brazil, dinner is typically served around 9 p.m.

Although this takes some adjusting every time I visit, I tend to prefer a later dinner. The main reason being more time to enjoy “lanchinhos” in the late afternoon.

Lanchinho (lung-sh-ing-o) is what Brazilians, like my grandmothers, call their afternoon snack or teatime.

In their households a variety of baked snacks are always on hand in case a neighbor decides to drop by for a chat, a standard in Brazilian hospitality.

From an early age I realized that visiting any household meant a delicious snack was waiting for me.

Homemade cookies with frosting, fresh-baked breads or fluffy warm cakes, I always accepted a taste.

That is why I loved accompanying my grandma Adelma when she visited anyone.

One of her favorite sweets to whip up is a simple “blender cake,” which calls for the majority of ingredients to be blended before being mixed with flour to form the batter.

My favorite flavor, and my grandmother’s, is the “bolo de laranja” or “orange cake.” Blender cakes like this one are usually subtly sweet and are best served as an accompaniment to tea or coffee. They also feature some sort of glaze, which helps them maintain moisture. The recipe I share for the cake today is my grandmother’s, but the glaze is my own creation.

Although the concept of visiting another person’s home may still seem abstract at the moment, soon we’ll hopefully all have neighbors and friends knocking on our doors for afternoon chats.

When those chats come, we might as well be prepared with a sweet lanchinho to share, along with a year’s worth of stories.

You can follow Alexandra on Instagram, @TheHungryGaucha