Hi everyone! Another easy peasy recipe for you.

Friands are small cakes made usually of almond meal. Sometimes fruit and nuts are added to the cake. It is similar to a financier (cake). Because of the use of almond meal, this little cake can be quite filling to some.

I love almonds and of course friands so I simply had to make these at home. We had some raspberries that were in the fridge for a couple of days and I was wondering what I could make with them. Having searched the kitchen cupboards, I found that we still had enough almond meal, flour and icing sugar to make these little scrumptious treat.

These are very easy to make.  I’m not sure why I don’t make them enough. I will now, knowing that Little Miss A loved them and surprisingly, Mr A did too. He’s not usually into cakes or sweets but perhaps it could be because these friands were not very sweet.

Friands are usually oval in shape and you can buy special silicone moulds or metal baking trays for them. I used a 12 hole mini muffin silicone baking moulds for these.

Easy Peasy Mini Raspberry Friands – makes roughly 30 mini friands

3 eggs
1/3 cup vegetable oil
2 Tbsp honey
100g melted butter
1/2 cup plain flour
1/2 cup icing sugar
1 1/2 cups almond meal
1/3 cup caster sugar
a punnet of fresh raspberries

1. Grease 3 x 12 hole mini muffin trays and set aside.  
2. In a medium-sized bowl, lightly whisk eggs and then add vegetable oil, honey and melted butter. Mix well. 
3. In a separate, large bowl, sift in the flour and icing sugar. Add the almond meal and caster sugar. Add wet ingredients into dry ingredients and mix thoroughly (note: batter should be pale in colour, it shouldn’t be too thick but sticky).
4. Pre-heat oven to 180ºC. Divide the batter evenly into the muffin pans then gently tap them on the bench top (this is to evenly distribute the batter into the muffin holes). Top with raspberries – (don’t press them all the way in) and bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes or until light and golden.
5. Leave in the muffin pans for 5 minutes before transferring onto a wire rack to cool completely.
6. Dust with icing sugar to serve. 

They taste best the next day. See if you can wait that long!

What I love about these friands is that they’re not very sweet even though we’ve used icing sugar, caster sugar and honey. These are also super easy to make.

I love the use of fresh raspberries too as it adds a nice acidic, fruity taste to the cake. Also because the friands are smaller, they’re lighter and will not make you feel full. In fact, they’ll make you come back for more. They taste much better the next day and they’re addictive. Won’t last long in the house.

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