Chocolate Financiers

For World Baking Day, which is today, I have decided to bake some Chocolate Financiers.  For this I took the recipe that I used a few weeks back, for Financiers, and adjusted it to include chocolate.

So, basically, I adjusted the amount of almonds and replaced some with cocoa powder.  I started the recipe yesterday, as the batter has to be refrigerated overnight, before being piping into the financier molds.

This recipe allowed me to use up the trimoline that I made when baking the original financiers.  But you don’t need to use trimoline, as I have found many recipes online that just use sugar instead.  But I think to make a decent flavoured financier is it necessary to make the beurre noisette, since that gives the butter such a nice taste.

Many recipes also seem to add fruit or nuts to the top of the batter after it has been piped into the moulds.  Some seem to cook the batter for a few minutes and then pop the fruit on, so that it doesn’t sink.

For me though I decided just on the nice, straightforward financiers, since the original ones that I made were so well received.  You could, of course, always serve them with a couple of raspberries and a little whipped cream, if you wanted to make them more of a dessert than an accompaniment to a cup of tea or coffee.  

They do taste good and are slightly crispy on the outside and moist and soft in the middle, with a great flavour of chocolate.

This mixture made 36 financiers for me.  So you should get a good number if you try the recipe, depending on how full you pipe each mold.

Ingredients:

• 120g plain flour
• 250g ground almonds
• 40g cocoa powder
• 250g icing sugar
• 305ml egg whites
• 100g trimoline(invert sugar)
• 340g butter

Method:

1. Sift the flour, 230g of almonds, cocoa powder and icing sugar.  If the ground almonds are not fine enough to sieve mix them into the sifted sugar and flour.
2. Add the egg whites and trimoline to the dry ingredients and mix until a smooth dough is formed.
3. In a small saucepan melt the butter and cook until it starts to colour.  Once the butter solids have turned a dark golden colour take of the heat.
4. Add to the dough and stir it in immediately.
5. Place the dough in a large bowl, add the remaining 20 of almonds and gently mix in. This will give a nice flecking to the baked financiers. 
6. Cover with plastic film and place in the refrigerator overnight.
7. Preheat the oven to 220c.  Lightly grease the moulds and place them on a baking sheet.
8. Transfer the batter to a piping bag fitted with a medium round tip.
9. Pipe into the moulds, filling them about two thirds full and bake until nice and firm, but springy to the touch, about 10 minutes.
10. Remove from the moulds and place on a wire rack to cool.