Financiers are French Petit Fours which I have made a few times, with different flavours. Today I thought I would try my basic one once again, but with a little cube of peach inserted on the top part way through baking. That will add a little something different when eating them. My basic recipe is from Le Cordon Bleu cookbook that I bought a while back. The recipe calls for trimoline, which is an invert sugar. The first time I made them I went through the process of making invert sugar and it worked well, but it took a lot of extra time. I have discovered that using golden syrup(or corn syrup) works just as well as the invert sugar. Indeed just adding more sugar rather than syrup will work, but maybe you wouldn’t have quite the same moistness in the cakes. There is a nice website, Chefeddy.com which gives very simple to follow instructions on how to make trimoline for those who wish to try it. That is the site I used when I did it.
The recipe also uses beurre noisette, which is a browned butter, strained to remove any black pieces formed during browning. This butter has a nice nutty flavour after browning and is well worth doing.
Although the recipe says to refrigerate the batter overnight I have seen many recipes that dont refrigerate at all. I followed the refrigeration method, since it firms up the batter. It may also allow the flavour of the butter to soak into the batter more thoroughly too.
The peach ones turned out very nicely and taste wonderful. When they come out of the over the edges are a little crispy, but that crispiness disappears quickly when they are stored in an airtight container.
Ingredients:
- 120g plain flour
- 270g ground almonds
- 250g icing sugar
- 305ml egg whites
- 100g Golden Syrup(or trimoline if using that)
- 340g butter
- 36 small cubes of peach(fresh is best but tinned is ok)
Method:
- Sift the flour, almonds and icing sugar. If using ground almonds and it is not fine enough to sieve mix it into the sifted sugar and flour.
- Add the egg whites and golden syrup to the dry ingredients and mix until a smooth dough is formed.
- 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.
- Add to the dough and stir it in immediately.
- Place the dough in a large bowl, cover with plastic film and place in the refrigerator overnight.
- Preheat the oven to 220c. Lightly grease the moulds and place them on a baking sheet.
- Transfer the batter to a piping bag fitted with a medium round tip.
- Pipe into the moulds, filling them about two thirds full and bake for 3 minutes. Remove from the oven and pop a piece of peach into the centre of each financier
- Return the financiers to the oven and continue to back for another 7 mintues,until golden brown and firm to the touch.
- Remove from the moulds and place on a wire rack to cool.
- Store in an airtight container.