Almond Cherry Financiers - Sheer Heaven in a Cake

Where do I start ?

I've been meaning to make cherry financiers ever since I saw them pictured in a recipe book a very long time ago. Pretty little teacakes... But cherries are so seasonal. When good ones come along, I like to eat them fresh. They generally never make it as far as home as they get scoffed on the journey back.

Despite searching high and low - I cannot find the recipe book. It would help if I could remember which one I was looking for !

Over the weekend, some stunning big fat cherries did make it home and I decided a coveted few would become cherry financiers. The picture I had seen looked so good - yet I could only imagine that I would be wasting those juicy cherries by cooking them. I prepared for disappointment.

Well - I was wrong. These are the most fantastic little French pastries. I ate the first still warm from the oven and my heart skipped a beat. There is no describing these - I really do need to urge you to make these for yourself.

For making these, I used our 11 mini cheesecake silicone bakeware mould. I specifically chose this mould as although similar to a mini muffin mould in diameter, it is deeper with straighter / more upright sides. You could substitute it with a mini muffin mould if that is all you have - or possibly a normal muffin tin.... though I consider those too large for this application.

As these were new moulds I was using, I lightly greased with spray on sunflower oil and then floured - making sure to tap out all the excess before filling the mould.

I googled for financier recipes and found a few. Some had baking powder in them, some did not. I opted for the recipe from Epicurious - but added in 1/2 a teaspoon of baking powder. I also halved the recipe and it fitted perfectly - filling all 11 cells of the mould.

Recipe

70g ground almonds

105g icing sugar

35g flour

92g of salted butter - that way I needn't bother adding salt !

92g of egg whites (that worked out exactly on 3 eggs)

1/2 tsp of baking powder

1/4 tsp of vanilla extract

Preheat fan oven to 230deg C

Brown the butter to a nut brown.

Sift the dry ingredients together and mix in the egg whites and vanilla. I used an electric hand held mixer. Add the hot butter, mixing in quickly.

Pour as quickly as you can into your moulds and then pop in your sweet cherry, with stalk attached.

Cook in the oven for 5 mins, then turn down the heat to 200deg C. Cook for a further 4 mins. Turn the oven off and leave for 4 mins more before removing from the oven.

Allow to cool for a few minutes before unmoulding. If you are anything like me - you'll be twitching and wishing the time away :-P

Supposedly you should allow these to cool - but they are marvellous still warm. The cherries have stared to split and oozing their juices. These are so good that after eating two - I handed the rest into the neighbours still warm. Had I left them in the house, I'd have eaten the lot before they cooled !

Sarah-Jane Nash - http://www.siliconemoulds.com/ - Flexible silicone bakeware recipes July 2010

Raspberry Cheesecakes - no bake

Ok - so ..... the TRUTH.

These turned out a total disaster !

 I've made no bake cheesecake a dozen times before - using various recipes and have never ever had a flop until now.

I really fancied making a batch of mini cheesecakes earlier this week and decided I'd use the left over mix to make some single portion sized heart shaped cheesecakes. They always release so nicely from the silicone moulds.

The recipe I was using is one I've used without problems before - from the Carnation website. However, I didn't have enough cream cheese to do the recipe - so decided to do a bit of re-jigging. It didn't go to plan ....

The mix was far too runny. I'd put in less cream cheese and a bit less condensed milk - but I'd added a stack of raspberries instead of the lemon juice and didn't really know what the volume was.

At this point, I could easily have rescued it had my brain been in the right gear by adding some gelatine. However - I think it was in reverse :-S

Instead, I added some double cream to the mix and whipped it up a bit. It seemed the same - maybe even more loose. Still - a few hours in the fridge might sort it. Nope - 24 hours and almost as runny as it went in :-(

The only solution was to freeze it to get it out of the siliconevmoulds nicely. It looks lovely - but is my biggest disaster to date. We did TRY to eat it - but it didn't work part / totally frozen and really was only fit for the bin.

For this reason - there is no recipe on this post. Stick to the original - that one works. Hahaha !

Good Food magazine have a nice looking no bake chocolate cheesecake recipe this month and there are stacks on the Good Food website and UKTV food. My favourite no-bake cheesecake recipe is a chocolate and Dulche-De-Leche one. I'll need to dig the recipe out for that next time and make sure I've got the ingredients in advance. Duh....