Financiers or Friands

I found a recipe on friands and tried it yesterday. After baking, then I found the recipe to be so similar to financiers. Did a check on these two-financiers and friands and found that they are actually the same.

"A financier is a small French cake... The financier is a light tea cake, similar to sponge cake, and usually contains almond flour, crushed or ground almonds, or almond flavoring. The basis of the cake itself is brown butter, egg whites, powdered sugar and flour. Financiers are often baked in shaped molds...
The friands that have become popular in Australia and New Zealand appear to have been based on the French financier; however, Australian and New Zealand friands typically have additional flavorings such as coconut, chocolate, fruit, and nuts." ~ Extracted from Wikipedia.

However, between financiers and friands, I'd prefer to call it financiers as I personally find it more class. :p

California Style Bakings 2

The once-a-week baking workshop is really interesting. Last week, we baked the cheesecake. This week, we baked two items - Financiers and Rockies.

For these two items, the bakings are quite straight forward. Therefore, there wasn't much theory, mostly follow the instructions and procedures. These were some of the steps.

Almond Financiers with Fruits and Nuts.


1. Melting the butter.
2. The butter has to be browned.
3. Whisking the egg whites manually.
4. Egg whites is foaming, the stage that is required for the financiers.
5. Pour the egg whites into the flour, and mix thoroughly.
6. Add in the cooled butter and mix completely.
7. Scoop the batter into a piping bag to pipe into the mould.
8. Add prunes and walnuts on top, and press in lightly.

These were my baked financiers sprinkled with icing sugar.



We were given very pretty cookie bag to present our financiers. These were from another group of coursemates.


Macadamia Rockies
Macadamia rockies are actually cookies. It was actually very nice, but too big for our mouth!
Our instructor, Mr. Lim, weighing out the dough to be 30g each.


Baking my "rockies" in the oven.


As I've shaped it too beautifully, it doesn't look rocky, but it does taste damned good!



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Lately, I haven't been updating on the wedding cake decoration workshop because we were just too busy preparing the cake before the grand assembling. I was too busy until I just have no time to take pictures. Anyway, on Friday, before we left, one instructor came over to our class and gave us bags of breads. It was "gave", not buy!! Otherwise usually, he will bring over loaves and loaves of white breads and we will buy from him. But this time, he was so nice to bring the breads and gave them to us!

Our instructor, Amy was really very nice to us too! She knew we'll always be looking for food and she will find some breads or buns for us. Last Friday, she actually cooked curry and brought it to the school for us. I'll really miss this batch of coursemates and Amy after the course. i just wish I can continue with some other courses with them again...

Leftover Egg Whites - Financiers

As indicated in my previous post on "What to do with left over egg whites??" I still have not used up my egg whites. Instead of getting lesser after CNY, it seemed to have increased...wondered if water has been accumulated in the egg whites...hmmm.

Anyway, I've decided to try out Financiers. I adopted the recipe from Tartelette. Instead of dark chocolates, I used white chocolates. Since she said can replace the almond meal with ground graham crackers, I replaced it with ground oat crackers. The result? You just can't get enough of them!! The recipe is really good! As I wasn't really a fan of white chocolates, I didn't want to let ground almonds go to waste. So I paired the white chocolates with ground crackers instead. Heehee...


Here is the recipe, modified slightly from Tartelette.
White Chocolate "Financiers"

Ingredients:
150g semisweet white chocolate, chopped
150g heavy cream
50g icing sugar
60g unsalted butter (melted)
40g plain flour
40g ground graham crackers
1/2tsp baking powder
105g egg whites (from 3 small eggs)

Method:
1. In a heavy bottom saucepan, heat the cream to boiling point, pour over the chocolate and let sit for 2 minutes. Gently stir to melt the chocolate and cream together until smooth.
2. In a separate bowl, combine the powdered sugar, flour, crackers, baking powder.
3. In a small bowl, beat the egg whites for a minute, just to break them up. Add them to the flour mixture carefully, before they are completely incorporated, add the melted butter.
4. Finally, fold in the chocolate/cream mixture and fold until smooth.
5. Divide the batter into the greased moulds (any moulds you like. I used madeleine moulds & small silicone cupcake moulds)
6. Bake at 180C for 15 to 20 minutes or until browned.
7. Cool for 5 minutes before you unmould them.