My Friend The Friand Recipes

Steps:

• Heat oven to 200 degrees C.
• Melt butter and allow it to cool.
• Use 1 tablespoon to coat 10 muffin tin moulds or individual oval baking moulds measuring 5 x 10 cm.
• Sift icing sugar and flour into bowl, mix in the ground almonds.
• Lightly beat egg whites with a fork, fold them into dry ingredients.
• Add cooled, melted butter and orange rind, mix well.
• Three quarters fill each mould with mixture and bake on the middle shelf of oven for 10 minutes.
• Turn tray around, and bake for another 5- 10 minutes, till tops are golden, and springy to the touch.
• Leave in the tins for 5 minutes, then gently unmould onto a wire tray and leave to cool.
• Dust the friands with icing sugar to serve.

Steps:

• Preheat the oven to 350°F/180°C/160°C fan/gas 4. Melt the butter in a small pan, then remove from the heat and leave to cool a little. Grease eight holes of the friand (or muffin) tin with a little bit of butter.
• Blitz 85g (2/3 cup) of the pistachio nuts in a food processor with the confectioners' sugar until very finely chopped. Tip into a bowl with the ground almonds and flour and mix together. Roughly chop the remaining pistachio nuts and set aside.
• Froth the egg whites lightly with a fork, then pour into the nuts and flour mixture with the melted butter and mix well.
• Pour the mixture into the friand tin holes, add a few raspberries to each one, then scatter with the chopped pistachios. Bake for 20-25 minutes until the friands are risen and springy to the touch and a skewer inserted comes out clean.
• Serve warm or at room temperature. Dust with a little confectioners' sugar if you like. They should be light and chewy!
• Twist:
• Pecan Pie Friands: Make the friand recipe above, swapping pistachios for 100g (1 cup) pecans and the raspberries for 75g (2.6 oz) chewy toffee, chopped into small pieces. Sprinkle the toffee over the friand batter before baking.