Friands thank you for making my day
Friands. Not the most common cake around, but these are so good and different from your usual boring butter cake. I love the texture of it, soft, moist, buttery with the grainy bits created by almond meal. Shh.... don't tell my mum but i used up all the egg whites she intended to cook for her salad tonight. Anyway, I had leftover egg whites from making creme brulee the other day, and almond meal from my failed macaroon experiment so as usual, i was just clicking around tastespotting and typing "egg whites" in the search function and out popped FRIANDS! I've never really eaten them before because cake is not really my thing (this is where you raise your eyebrows and go "oh really mel"), but yes I love baking more than eating cakes. Apparently they're an aussie or new zealand kind of cake, adapted from financier, a french tea cake. But I try to avoid anything sounding businessy for the sake of my sanity. So let's just call this friands - the way the aussies do. These turned out heavenly, 15 minutes into the oven and you could smell the sweet aroma of cake from the oven. WARNING: These are highly addictive. But then again they make you happy! The recipe that I used actually made it with lemon and raspberries, but because raspberries are extremely expensive in Singapore. I used white chocolate and strawberries. Burnt white chocolate is always good!!
I have a friand pan at home from australia but if you don't have one, you can just use muffin pans. They turn out the same.
Strawberry and White Chocolate Friands
(adapted from Kitsch in the kitchen)
makes approximately 11 in a friand pan
125g (4 oz) unsalted butter
110g (1 cup) almond meal
235g (1 2/3 cups) icing sugar
115g (3/4 cup) plain flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/3 cup chopped white chocolate
5 egg whites
50g chopped strawberries (don't chop them too tiny)
Preheat oven to 180°C (350°F), place paper baking cups on a flat tray.
Melt butter in a small saucepan over low heat. Cook the butter until it is light golden in colour, remove from heat and set aside.
Combine the almond meal, icing sugar, flour, baking powder, and lemon zest in a medium bowl and whisk to combine. Stir in the egg whites and mix until well combined. Pour in the butter and stir until completely combined.
Spoon batter into paper baking cups, filling each cup just over 3/4 full. Scatter a few berries on top of each friand, resist pushing them into the batter. Bake friands for 15-20 minutes, or until they are golden on top. Cool on a wire rack.
