Descended from French financiers, Australian friands also get their signature nutty taste and light texture from a combination of almond flour and whipped egg whites. Browned butter underscores the flour’s rich, toasty flavor, but a berry or two—we use raspberries, but blueberries would also be wonderful—and citrus zest provide a bright pop of fresh flavor in a cake that otherwise might be one-note.
These sweet treats are on my Mother’s Day brunch menu, and they should be on yours, too. They’re just sweet enough and travel beautifully, if you’re bringing them to Mom’s. And at just three bites, they’re a perfect finish for a meal or snack with tea that still feels light. Plus, they’re half the work of a cake and just as impressive.
Sift your ingredients
I’ll admit it, I groan when a recipe asks me to sift dry ingredients, but this step makes a real difference here. Powdered sugar, almond flour and AP flour all have different densities, and almond flour and powdered sugar are prone to clumping. Sifting ensures an even texture in your final cakes.
Learn to love almond meal for baking
Almond flour, or almond meal, is a baker’s secret for a tender, moist crumb. You can’t over-mix it, so you don’t run afoul of tough pastries from excessive gluten development, the way you might with AP other wheat-based flours. And it holds moisture beautifully without losing structure.
Brown your butter!
When you cook butter to the point that the milk solids brown, not only are you giving the butter a toasty, nutty flavor, but you’re evaporating off about a fifth of its water content. Since water + wheat-based flour = gluten, you’re naturally limiting the opportunity for gluten formation, thus creating a more tender pastry.
Don’t whisk your egg whites too much
Egg whites are doing all of the work of raising the cakes (no leaveners are here to help!), but this takes a little balance. What we don’t want here is the tight, stiff egg whites you’d aim for when making a meringue. Whites whipped to stiff peaks don’t have the elasticity to expand during baking, and they will become brittle when baked, giving the cakes a drier texture. Stop after two to three minutes, when your egg whites are softly whipped—they should be opaque, past the stage of looking like frothy dish soap, but not stiff and cloud-like.
Trust me—under-mix your batter
One lesson we learned from London-based baker Claire Ptak that has changed the way we bake: When folding egg whites into dry ingredients, under-mix. As the recipe instructs, there should be no dry spots left, but streaks of egg white should still be clearly visible. Why? You get a second crack at mixing the batter when you add your butter mixture and, as Ptak has taught us, slightly under-mixed batter will finish homogenizing in the oven. The benefit is that you’re working the batter less, which is key in a recipe that relies on only whipped egg whites—and the air within them—for leavening.
Make it a point to use a mini muffin tin, and push your berries in just enough
I know some of you are thinking “Well, I have a standard muffin tin, why not just make 12 bigger friands rather than the 24 mini called for?“ Don’t do it! Part of the appeal of these little cakes is the amount of gorgeously crisp, almost brittle crust you get around the edges. The ratio will go off in a bigger pan.
And when pushing your berries into each well, keep in mind that you’re not working with as much depth as a regular muffin tin might offer. Try not to let your raspberries hit pan, otherwise the friands will be a bit harder to unmold.
These are best the day they’re made, but mine made it to day two and were still pretty crisp on the outside and moist on the inside—they needed a fresh dusting of powdered sugar, but that was it. No friands made it to day three.
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