Tags
almonds, cake, dairy free, Day 2, egg white, friand, friday, gluten free, raspberry, recipe, Small Street Espresso, tomor, weekend challenge
In my world, courtesy of Small Street Espresso, Friday’s have become Friand Friday. Okay, so sometimes it’s also Friand Tuesday, or Wednesday, but you get my drift. My impromptu long weekend threw a bit of a spanner in the works (shh, okay so I also had a Friand Thursday) when it came to my Friday tradition, so I thought I’d recreate the magic.
Day 2: Fun with Friands
With the Friday tradition already out the window, Friands were my Saturday challenge. I know what you’re thinking, this girl’s used the word Friand 5 times in the last 5 sentences, but what on earth is a bloody Friand?! Well. Friands are a deliciously light little cake, originating from France but often associated with the Aussies. According to modern sources “Friand” translates from French to mean sausage roll or fond (adj). Personally, I prefer the slightly older (1839) translation from Boyer’s French Dictionary of dainty or delicate.
Traditionally, friands are little bite size cakes and are made using primarily almonds, egg whites and icing sugar. I flavoured mine with fresh raspberries. Again, I took my recipe inspiration from a number of recipes online, putting my own twist on it.
Rarely do I cook full meals – I’m more of a sweets kinda girl – but with friends back in town I thought this was the perfect excuse to get together, celebrate, and use them as guinea pigs make them lots of yummy things. With just a couple of hours till dinner, I got a request for everything to be dairy free. Dairy free and gluten free? No biggie. I’m always happy to cater for the digestively challenged.
The Result
Cakes that didn’t last long. I’m not kidding, they barely lasted long enough to serve as pudding and they definitely did not last long enough for there to be any spares to drop in to Small Street. Sorry guys!
Also, a lot of egg yolks, six to be precise. This is probably a good thing because I REALLY want to make these again solely for my own selfish purposes, but I refuse to until I find a good used for the left over egg yolks.
The Recipe
175g Tomor hard block margarine, melted and cooled
100g ground almonds
6 egg whites, lightly beaten
2 tsp vanilla extract
210g icing sugar
70g Doves GF plain flour
1 tsp GF baking powder
½ tsp Xantha Gum
¼ tsp bicarbonate of soda
Fresh raspberries – however many you want to stick in the top!
1. Preheat the oven to 190˚C/160˚C fan/375˚F
2. Line a bun tin with cupcake cases
3. Put everything into a mixing bowl and stir until just combined, making sure there are no lumps.
4. Spoon the mixture out into the cases until they’re about half full and bake for about 25 minutes until golden on top and you can stick a skewer into them and it come out clean.
5. Leave to cool, then consume and make sure you have friends round to stop you consuming the whole batch.