Spiced Financiers

Spiced plum financiers with mulled plum jam and French buttercream

These little spiced financiers are buttery bites of deliciousness, I think I developed this recipe when I was doing my Bake Off Bake along and somehow forgot to post it. Having tested a few different financier recipes this one was definitely my favourite, it’s so easy and so delicious, you could easily eat them alone but the recipe requires loads of egg whites which left me with the yolks to use up so I thought rather than leaving them in the fridge to be forgotten about I’d just use everything at once and make a silky vanilla French buttercream to go with them.

Ingredients

Financier Makes 12-18

200g butter

200g caster sugar

200g egg white / 5 large egg whites

150g ground almonds

50g plain flour

2tsp cinnamon

1/4tsp ground cloves

1/4tsp ground nutmeg

1/4tsp ground cardamom

pinch salt

French Buttercream

90g egg yolk / 5 large egg yolks

150g caster sugar

300g unsalted, room temperature butter

pinch salt

1/2 vanilla pod or 1tsp vanilla bean paste

Method

• Start by browning the butter, place in a pan on a medium heat and cook, whisking occasionally until small brown specks appear. Remove from the heat and leave to cool.

• Once the brown butter is room temperature, make the financier batter by whisking together the egg whites and caster sugar (just to combine, no need to incorporate air) followed by the dry ingredients. Lastly add the brown butter.

• Set the financier batter aside to chill for at least 2 hours or overnight.

• Once chilled, pre-heat the oven to 170°C and grease your tins, I used these little fluted ones but just use what you have!

• Pipe or spoon into your tins, I weighed mine at 40g each and got 18 (although I did lose a few trying to get them out of the tins, grease your tins well guys!)

• Bake at 170°C for 15-20 minutes, mine took exactly 17 minutes!

• Onto the French buttercream, place the sugar in a pan with just enough water to cover it, stir once to break up any lumps of sugar and put it on a medium-high heat, we want it to reach 118°C

• While the syrup is heating up, put the yolks into the bowl of a stand mixer and whisk on high, they will get pale and fluffy, this might take a while, just leave them whisking.

• Once the syrup has reached 118°C, slowly pour over the egg yolks whilst whisking.

• Leave the yolk mixture whisking for about 5-10 minutes until it reaches room temperature then add in the butter about 1/3 at a time followed by the vanilla and salt.

• Whisk until it’s nice and fluffy and all of the butter is incorporated, it had a denser texture than Italian meringue buttercream and a richer, more custardy flavour.

• Pipe onto the financiers, they’re delicious just like this or you can add a dollop of jam, I added my mulled plum jam but orange curd, cherry jam, blackcurrant jam would all work perfectly, go nuts!

• Lastly I added some little marzipan flowers and that’s it!