Friands

[Seaweed]

I went to see a friend of mine today & she finally made us some of her GF friands. They were so tasty! I am going to experiment this weekend with making some here as it is dd#2's birthday next week. I want to make them grainfree as well. I will post the recipe I use in the end as dd wants chocolate friands & the ones we had were plain.

Anyone make friands & have a recipe to share? Anyone tried them with honey instead of sugar?

[Serephina]

I've made gluten free friands previously and they were delicious! Still full of sugar, which is why I haven't made them in a long time.

I don't think they would work with honey unfortunately as the batter very light and airy in order for them to rise. I'll see if I can find the recipe I used.

ETA: Found the recipe but apparently the ones I made were wheat free, not gluten free like I thought. In saying that I do think they would work equally well with GF flour.


Raspberry Friands

5 egg whites
1 scant cup caster sugar
1 cup white spelt flour (or sub for GF flour)
1 cup ground almonds
2 tbsp lemon zest, grated
1 tsp vanilla essence
120g butter, melted
150g fresh raspberries (or frozen and thawed)
Icing sugar

Preheat oven to 180˚C. Butter a 12-cup friand or muffin tray. Beat egg whites in a medium bowl until soft peaks form. Gradually beat in caster sugar until it is like meringue. Sift the flour into a large mixing bowl. Stir in the ground almonds, lemon zest and vanilla. Fold in the melted butter, and then gently mix in 100 grams of the raspberries. Fold carefully into the meringue mix.
Spoon mixture into friand cups until two-thirds full. Divide remaining raspberries between friands, pushing into mix until covered. Bake for 18 minutes until golden and an inserted skewer comes out cleanly. Stand for 5 minutes, before turning out onto a wire rack. Dust sparingly with icing sugar.

They do freeze beautifully and it's easy to adapt the recipe to different flavours eg. orange and poppyseed or chocolate hazelnut.

[Seaweed]

The ones I have had have been quite dense. I guess I could use palm sugar instead of real sugar. Pity almonds as so expensive or I could really experiment.

[Seaweed]

I made some with palm sugar & tapioca flour so they are grain free & they are super yummy. What I did was I had about 200g of almonds so I put them in the blender & ground them up. I threw about 100g of tapioca starch in with them & whizzed it quickly to mix & get the lumps out. I melted 175g or so of butter with 200g of dark chocolate. Crumbled & mashed in 150 or so g of palm sugar. Whisked up 10 egg whites, stirred in the melted chocolate mix, then folded in the almonds & tapioca. Put the mixture into muffin tins with a chunk of dark chocolate in the middle. Baked in my oven ( which is a fan oven ) at about 190degC until they looked done.

[Serephina]

Glad to hear they worked out well. So far all my sugar and grain free baking attempts have been quite inedible! I'll have to give your recipe a go. :)

[Seaweed]

I always say cooking is more of an art than a science! I have some disasters too but I have chooks for them. Otherwise everything usually turns out quite well. I think the trick is to have a relatively forgiving ingredients list. eg the chocolate friands as there was pretty much nothing I could do to stuff them up short of burning them. I think btw I have managed to make a decent chocolate devil's food cake with coconut flour. I am waiting for it to cool & then need to ice it before I can tell for sure. I will post the recipe if it really has worked.