Patisserie is a wonderful word. For me, it conjures up images of the most beautiful little cake shops lining the streets of Paris with their windows crammed full of delicious eclairs and macarons and pastries in the most amazing array of colours. Patisserie is an art form. And unless you’re a seasoned baker I think standing in your own kitchen ready to make one of these sweet treats for yourself, would fill a lot of people with dread. You’re probably arming yourself with a sugar thermometer or pastry bags lined with an army of nozzles or whisks or a dozen egg yolks.
But there are some delectable little Parisienne treats that are actually quite simple to make. You probably won’t want to admit it to too many people as they’ll think you’ve slaved for hours producing these tiny little cakes and we don’t have to tell, do we?!
Friands are one of my very favourite treats and they are so simple to make. You mix everything together in one bowl and can have them in the oven in around 5-10 minutes. I promise you, it’s no more complicated than that. I like to put fruit in our friands, especially raspberries and blueberries but you really can choose whatever flavouring or fruit you like. The trick I've found with them is all in the greasing of the tins. You need to really grease them. I mean really, really grease them. I tried silicone ones in the past and I've found that the metal tins work best for me. And you don't need to invest in fancy friand tins, you can use ones that you already have including regular cupcake tins.
Some years back, during one of our trips to New Zealand, we stumbled upon a little bakery on a day trip. Hubby disappeared into the store and came out armed with some goodies for us to take to see friends later that day. One of them was a lemon friand and it had been injected with lemon curd — I think it was one of the most delicious things I’ve ever tasted. So my recipe for you is raspberry and blueberry friends filled with rich lemon curd.
I promise you these are something special.
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Raspberry & Blueberry Friands with Lemon Curd
Makes 9 friands
Ingredients
- 200g liquid egg whites (or 5 egg whites if you want to crack open your eggs)
- 150g melted butter
- 90g ground almonds
- 185g sifted icing sugar
- 50G sifted plain flour
- raspberries (you 2 for each friand)
- blueberries (you need 5 for each friand)
- lemon curd (1-2 tsp for each friand, to taste)
You will also need a baking tin (friand or cupcake will work great but be creative with what you have available) and a Cupcake & Doughnut Filler Nozzle with a piping bag
Method
- Preheat the oven to 180 degrees (fan)
- Grease a friand tin - you need to grease these well and I use Bake Release for this
- Whip the egg whites for a few seconds just to mix them up
- Then add the butter, ground almonds, icing sugar and flour
- Mix on the lowest setting until just combined
- Pour into the friand tin, filling each hole until it's 2/3 full
- Then pop 2 raspberries or 5 blueberries on the top of each friand
- Bake in the oven for 25 mins or until a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean
- Loosen the friands in their tin and leave them cool for 10 minutes
- Very gently prise them out of the tin - they have a delicate crumb that might break up - then tip them out gently onto a cooling rack
- Put your lemon curd into the piping bag with the filler nozzle and insert the nozzle into the bottom of one side of the friand first, squeezing in the lemon curd until you meet resistance (you'll know if you squeeze in too much as it will come back out of the cake but don't worry if this happens -- just wipe the excess away) and then repeat on the other side of the friand
- Serve warm (ideally) and sprinkled with icing sugar
- And enjoy :)