It’s always good to have a recipe to hand where you can go from nothing to cake on a plate within thirty minutes. That’s why for the third day of my Baking Advent Calendar I’m sharing pistachio, hazelnut and raspberry friands, one of my favourite quick and easy bakes. Don’t be put off by what might look like a lengthy list of ingredients, when it comes to the method these little cakes couldn’t be more straight forward to make. Friands are small individual cakes with ground almonds and fruit always amongst the key ingredients. The mixture is the same as that used in the French cakes known as financiers. The only real difference that I can see between the two is that financiers are baked in oblong moulds whereas friend are baked in circular moulds. Which means that if you have both types of tins this recipe gives you two bakes for your repertoire.
The recipe that I use comes from Clare Ptak’s Violet Bakery Cookbook . If you do make these I suggest that you use raspberries the first time, but after that you can experiment with virtually any other soft fruit. I’d also suggest that other than sticking with the almonds you can switch the other nuts in the recipe about to match whatever you have in your pantry when you come to bake.
Clare Ptak’s name may be familiar to you as she is the baker Prince Harry and Meghan asked to make their wedding cake. I first discovered Clare’s recipes when they appeared in a food magazine prior to her books publication. I shared pictures of some that I made on my Twitter feed and Clare responded with some very positive feedback. The result was one very happy amateur baker who probably bored all his friends in the following weeks showing them Clare’s tweets.
This recipe makes a dozen to sixteen cakes depending on the size of the moulds that you are using. I regular make batches of six to eight cakes using half the measurements.
Ingredients
- 115g of butter. This needs to be melted in a saucepan.
- 90g plain flour
- 3/4 of a tsp baking powder
- 50g ground almond
- 40g ground hazelnuts
- 40g ground pistachios
- 190g icing sugar
- 5 egg whites, slightly whisked.
- 2tsp vanilla extract
- 200g fresh raspberries
- 50g slivered pistachios
Method
- Heat the oven to gas mark 3. Butter the baking tin that you are going to use.
- Place all of the ingredients other than the slivered pistachios and the raspberries in the bowl of a food processor. Blitz until foamy.
- Spoon the mixture into the cake moulds, filling them to about three quarters. Place two to three raspberries on top of each and sprinkle with the slivered pistachios.
- Bake for 15 to 20 minutes. The cakes should be springy to the touch.
- Let them cool slightly then remove from the moulds. As a final touch you can sprinkle a little icing sugar on top.
David in the kitchen. 