I’m very happy to say that I’ve just discovered the wonders of friands, a close cousin to French financiers. I had never heard of a friand before this week and I’m so glad I now know.
As I’ve mentioned in prior blogs, I have a bookshelf bulging with cookbooks and at the moment, I’m feeling a little overwhelmed with what to cook next. I get easily distracted. I have also bookmarked pages with pieces of paper, but looking at some cookbooks it seems that I have marked every single page.
In a bit of a state, I just gave a book to my partner and asked him politely (!!) in my panic to just chose one. He chose the friands, even though I hadn’t marked it. Don’t know how I missed that one. Anyway, my partner is now to choose each recipe going forward until he elects a dud.
I think I will bake friands again, once its summer and an array of fruits are in season. I used canned fruits in the below recipe, as I don’t like genetically engineered / unripe peaches.
100 gr unsalted butter, plus more for greasing the tins 100 gr white chocolate 230 gr desiccated coconut 345 gr icing / confectioners sugar 115 gr plain flour 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 6 egg whites 1 can sliced peaches, in their own juice (drained and cut into small cubes)I used 12 mini loaf tins, but you can use a regular muffin tray or buy a friand tin.
Turn the oven on to 180 C / 350 F.
In a small saucepan, add the butter and chocolate and heat over a very low heat, stirring continuously.
In a large mixing bowl, sift in the sugar and flour and add the coconut, vanilla extract and the egg whites, which have been whisked lightly first. Mix these ingredients together and add the butter and chocolate mixture.
Divide this mixture among the tins, filling just over half way and then drop the peaches on top. Bake in the pre-heated oven for 20 – 25 minutes. Leave these to cool on a wire rack. Enjoy!
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- Raspberry and vanilla friands with cacao nibs (nami-nami.blogspot.com)
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