Brown Butter Almond cakes

You might have heard of little French almond cakes called financiers (or friands, the Australian version). I’m a big fan and so I came up with this recipe, that instead of using just egg whites, uses the whole egg. What I love about this recipe is that it gives you a great base with moisture from the fat in the almonds, that you can use for endless flavour combinations, matching fruit with herbs or spices or different kinds of nuts. At the coffee roaster’s I worked at in Soho, London, we baked a new flavour of friands every day, my creativity had free reign and that’s when I fell in love with little almond cakes.

Ingredients:

makes 10 small cakes

  • 140g butter (plus 20-30g extra for the recipe and for greasing)

  • 70g flour (or potato starch)

  • 100g ground almonds

  • 150g icing sugar

  • 3 eggs

  • spices/herbs e.g. vanilla, thyme, lavender, lemon zest etc.

  • Fruit e.g. blackberries, raspberries, slices of fig or apricot etc.

  • Icing sugar for dusting

optional:

  • 1 tsp lemon juice

  • 35g icing sugar

Method:

To make them brown butter, melt the 140g in a saucepan over medium heat until it starts to foam. Leave it to cook for about 4-5 minutes until small bubbles are forming. When the butter is a golden-brown colour and smells hazelnutty, remove from heat and set aside to cool for 5 minutes. Weigh the butter and add the missing amount to get to 140g again. Stir to melt the added butter and leave to cool.

Mix the flour, ground almonds, icing sugar and your spice(s) or herbs in a bowl. Add the eggs and mix well with a whisk, until lump free. Add the butter (which should be liquid but not hot) and mix well. In my experience this recipe comes out better if you leave it to cool in the fridge for at least a couple of hours, or even overnight. You can keep the batter in a container with a lid.

Heat the oven (180ºC/160º fan oven). Grease muffin moulds or small silicone moulds with a bit of melted butter or baking spray. Spoon the cake batter into the moulds, leaving a 1-1,5 cm gap to the top. Place any fruit you’d like add to your cakes now, pressing them down lightly. Bake for about 25-30 minutes until the top of the cakes is golden-brown. Leave to cool for at least 10-15 minutes before demoulding and leaving them to cool completely on a wire rack.

Dust with icing sugar to serve, or mix icing sugar with a bit of lemon juice to a thick glaze an drizzle over the cakes.