Making Financiers

Financier is a small French teatime cake. The difference between financier and the normal sponge cake is that it contains ground almond and egg whites only. The key to the moist texture of financier is the ground almond itself and adding some honey to the batter.

The ingredients are pretty simple:

All dry ingredients in one mixing bowl:
50 g plain flour
100 g ground almond
130 g granulated sugar

In a small saucepan:
130 g beurre noisette (brown butter)

150 g egg whites (about 5 eggs), in room temperature 
2 tsp honey
1/2 tsp vanilla essence

The method is also very straightforward:

1. First, butter all the baking pans then dust with flour (I'm using muffin pan and mini tart pan. You can use any petite mould/pans. The traditional financier pan is shallow rectangular which resembles a bar of gold). Pre-heat the oven to 200 C.
2. Make the brown butter by cooking the butter until it turns golden brown. Swirl it once in a while. Don't burn it. Then let it cool for 15-20 minutes.
3. With a hand mixer, just mix all the dry ingredients together. Then add the egg whites. Mix in low speed until all are combined. 
4. Slowly pour in the brown butter and mix in low speed.
5. Add honey and vanilla essence and mix until all are well combined.
6. Scoop the batter with an ice cream scooper into the muffin pan and bake in the oven at 200 C for 15 minutes.

Note: I also made the chocolate chip variation and the mini financiers. For the mini one, I just baked it for 10 minutes or until the edges are golden brown colour, it's done.

The reference for this recipe is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiw1EE97ZFo. Credit to Bruno Albouze.