Christmas Friands
Maybe not the most Christmassy of the bakes, but still a fantastic bake for this list. These can be made several days in advance, with the raw mixture keeping for 2 days in the fridge. This snack is a quick and simple recipe that makes a massive 27 cupcakes. You could always make them in batches of 9 using ⅓ of the ingredients, like I did. Which does allow you to be more experimental and flexible with this recipe.
Ingredients
- 200g unsalted butter
- 6 egg whites
- 75g plain flour
- 3 tsp baking powder
- 1.5 tsp ground cinnamon
- 4.5 tsp ground ginger
- pinch of ground nutmeg, optional
- 200g icing sugar
- 140g ground almonds
Equipment
- A Small pan
- A Large bowl
- A jug
- Electric whisk
- Spatula
- Three (or more) muffin or cupcake trays
Method
1) Set oven to 200C/180C fan/gas 6, you can set it to a lower temperature
2) Fill trays with cases or grease to ensure that they can be removed easily.
3) Melt the butter in a pan and then leave to cool fully, but still a liquid.
4) Mix the dry ingredients, everything but butter and egg whites on the recipe list, into a large bowl.
5) This next part is by far the most challenging part of this recipe, separating an egg. It can be easy, or a pain in the neck. All I can say is good luck. I dislike this part so much I use (and have used for years now) a form of measuring spoon which separates the egg yolks and whites. Once you have chosen your technique or equipment, get a jug out and split the egg using that. Add the egg whites to a clean jug. Use multiple jugs to ensure that you don’t get any egg yolks in the mix. You can use these egg yolks as an egg wash for any pastries or another recipe. If you can’t find a good recipe, use them in a scrambled eggs or omelette recipe.
6) Add baking powder to the egg whites and whisk, preferably with an electric whisk, until you reach stiff peaks. “Stiff peaks”, glad you asked, this is when the mixture is very thick and so when you take the whisk heads out of the mix it makes a “peak” and this peak doesn’t break and is still visible in the mixture. One of the most common ways you’ve probably heard of is to flip the mixture over your head and it won’t fall out. If you are confident that you have stiff peaks then you can show off to those around you and use this method. But I give everyone around you permission to tell you you’ve got egg on your face if it fails.
7) Make a well in the middle of the dry ingredients and then add in the cooled melted butter mix. Mix until the mixture is smooth and has a dough/gingerbread like texture.
8) Fold in the egg whites into the mix. Use the spatula to slowly mix the ingredients together, make sure not to knock out the air.
9) Spoon into cupcake cases or the trays you have prepared.
10) Place into oven for 18 mins, they should be springy to the touch once cooked
11) Leave to cool, then enjoy
If you want to experiment with this recipe, try melting 200g of chocolate with the butter in step 3). If you do, I’d suggest you remove the spices. You could also add fruit or seeds when you fold in the egg whites. If you reached this point, I would love to find out how yours went.