Spiced Friands (Almond cakes)
Hello everyone! Work has been crazy busy lately with the number of cases compounding every passing day. I have recently started baking again and often bring it to the office to share. Many of my colleagues are gluten free so I have been trying out more gluten free recipes. While going through my recipe arsenal I came across this friand recipe I tried during Christmas. Friands are little almond cakes that taste absolutely exquisite but cost a fortune at cafes. I admit, I never got around to blogging about it because I felt that they were a bit too dense. But I have now tweaked the recipe and am happy to report that I will never buy another friand in the cafe again. This has to be one of the most versatile recipe I have. It is super easy to change the flavour and make gluten free! You have to try it, your home will smell divine and your pocket will thank you too.
- 190g unsalted butter
- 60g plain flour
- 200g icing sugar, plus extra to dust
- 120g almond meal (ground almonds)
- 2 tsp ground cinnamon
- pinch grated nutmeg
- pinch ground ginger
- 5 egg whites
- 1. Melt butter in pan, set aside to cool. Preheat oven to 180°C.
- 2. Use some melted butter to brush your pan. You can use a muffin pan if you do not have a friand pan.
- 3. Sift almond meal, flour, icing sugar and spices together into a bowl.
- 4. In a separate bowl, froth egg whites in mixer or by hand. Do not let any sort of peak form!
- 5. Gently fold mixture from step 3 into your frothed egg whites until well combined.
- 6. Fill you friand holes till 2/3 full.
- 7. Bake till light golden or when skewer comes out clean.
- 8. Leave in the pan to cool for about 5 minutes before removing it to cool.
- 1. To make a fruit friand, omit spices in step 3 and replace with 1 grated lemon zest. Continue all the other steps. After step 6, simply drop in your cut fruits and bake.
- 2. It is very important to allow the friands to cool in the pan for at least 5 minutes before removing them from the pan.
- 3. For a gluten free version, simply swap out the 60g of flour for a gluten free friendly flour. I used Edmonds Gluten Free Plain Flour and the texture was not altered at all.
- 4. Top with toasted almond and dust with extra icing if you like. You can also fill it! Simply create a hole using a chopstick or something similar and pipe in your filling. I filled the ones in the photo with chocolate ganache.
Affordable, Baking, delicious, Easy, Fast Recipe, Gluten free