Friands are a favourite of mine, since I discovered them last year sometime. Usually made with ground almonds as the main base they are a delicious cake which is very popular in Australia and New Zealand in particular. For the ones I made today I varied the recipe, using hazelnuts and almonds, to give a slightly different flavour. I saw a recipe in The Guardian for Hazelnut and Raspberry Friands which I liked. But I decided to use my basic friand recipe, rather than the one in that article, and just swap out some of the almonds for hazelnuts.
As I have said before Friands are so easy to make and even if you don’t have a friand tin you can make them using a muffin tin and they are just as good, just a different shape.
The combination of hazelnut and raspberries worked very well indeed, giving me a really tasty cake that goes so well with a cup of tea or coffee. These would certainly be a coffee shop favourite I think.
From start to finish you can make these in less than an hour and have a wonderful cake ready to serve to visitors.
Ingredients:
- 185g melted unsalted butter
- 225g icing sugar
- 50g plain flour
- 60g ground almonds
- 90g ground hazelnuts
- 6 medium egg whites(large in USA)
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 50g roughly chopped hazelnuts
- 150-200g fresh raspberries
Method:
- Preheat the oven to 200C/180C/400F.
- Grease a 12 hole friand tin(or a muffin tin)
- In a large bowl sift the icing sugar and flour and add the ground almonds and ground hazelnuts.
- Stir to combine.
- Whisk the egg whites until slightly frothy and add to the dry ingredients, with the vanilla extract.
- Stir in until all is combined.
- Add the melted butter and stir in until fully combined.
- Divid the batter equally into the holes of the friand tin.
- Drop raspberries onto the top of the batter(I used 3 in each hole).
- Sprinkle the chopped hazelnuts over the top.
- Bake in the oven for 20 to 22 minutes, until a skewer poked into the middle of the friands comes out clean.
- Remove from the oven and allow to cool for a few minutes before transferring the friands to a wire rack too cool completely.