Ode to the Aussie

The Friand - an Aussie Treat. These are made with almond meal, confectioner's sugar, and blueberries

As most of you know, one of my best girlfriends moved back to Australia. I was a very sad lady when she left and feared that without her incredible talent for the savory I would be nothing. Well lucky for me her fiance is one of the producers of the new Broadway hit "Title of Show" so they came back to New York for the opening. What did that mean for me!?!? The Aussie and the American were back together again. The ying to my yang, the savory to my sweet back and badder than ever.

In the past, whenever Lizzie would go home for a holiday she would inevitably bring back some sort of fabulous Australian baking gadget for me. This time was no different. She arrived with two suitcases, a bag of homemade pom-poms, and... a FRIAND pan. What is a friand you ask? Well that is a VERY good question. From your friends at Wikipedia:

"A financier, sometimes called a friand, is a type of pastry that originated in France but has become most popular in Australia and New Zealand. The financier is a light tea cake, similar to a sponge cake, and usually contains almond flour, crushed or ground almonds, or almond flavoring. The "financier" is said to derive from the traditional rectangular mold, which resembles a bar of gold. Another theory says that the cake became popular in the financial district of Paris La Bourse du Commerve (the former name of the Paris stock exchange). Friands served in Australia and New Zealand are baked in small oval shapes and typically have additional flavorings such as coconut, chocolate, fruit, and nuts."

Not only was I excited to have my bosom buddy - I watched Anne of Green Gables last weekend what can I say - back, but I was also excited to have a new baking toy and recipe! Since most of the recipes she brought with her were in the metric system, Lizzie and I made a pact that we would make friands together before she left. We of course got side tracked with copious amounts of shopping, making enormous sushi dinners, posing for pictures for the beloved site hotchickswithdouchebags.com - some of our finest work to date - and salsa dancing our faces off under the stars.

I didn't realize until after Lizzie - sniff and gulp - left that we never got around to the friands. More importantly, who was going to make the grams to lbs conversions? Truthfully, I was really bummed when she left. When she moved back in May we knew that she was coming back in a couple of months, but this time? Who knows when we will see each other again.

I was pretty down in the dumps so I went to my kitchen and I did what I do best: bake. I was a lunatic. I baked for probably 5 hours straight and I started with the friands as an homage to my dear friend now flying 22 hours back to the her motherland.

The reason I chose this recipe is VERY scientific: it was the only recipe that was mostly in lbs and not in grams. I mean I figured I could fudge the rest. I thought what a great alternative to the everyday muffin and probably A LOT better for you. Ahem, thanks to Bloomberg we - New York City - have all the calories listed at chain restaurants now. A LOW-FAT muffin at a Boston-based donut fave has MORE calories than a cruller. WHAT!?!?! Anyway, I digress. So I got to making the friands. It was so easy. A little almond meal, a little confectioner's sugar, some melted butter, vanilla, a little of this and a little of that and viola it was ready.

Not so fast... The recipe said the batter should be a moderately thick consistency. Hmmm... mine was down right soupy. Crapola. I didn't have Lizzie to call or even text. At this point I think she was over the South Pacific, so I started improvising. For the record, with baking this - experimenting - can be brilliant or downright dangerous. I added a bit more of the flour, the almond meal, and the confectioner's sugar. I greased the hell out of the pan because I am out of my pesky baking spray and I followed the directions: one blueberry on the bottom of cup, fill cup 3/4 of the way, place 2-3 blueberries on top, and move on. Two to Three blueberries?!?! Okay... I popped them in the oven and prayed.

I came back in a half an hour and the frainds smelled really sweet and were a golden brown, but where did the blueberries go? The baking powder in the batter made it rise over the blueberries. How brilliant is that? If there had been more than 3 blueberries the batter would never have had a chance.

I could tell that these weren't going to be easy to get out of the pan. You know, no matter how much I grease and flour an odd shaped pan i.e. friand, bundt, angel food, they get stuck. I had a little battle with the damned friands until I had - as Oprah calls it - an "A-HA!" moment. A spoon would aide in the removal of said friands. Thank goodness for the spoon. What a fantastic invention! I got them out of the pan and onto a plate. Hmmm... these would be perfect for an Irish Pub Road Race breakfast coming up on Cape Cod. In a zip lock and into the freezer they went.

I took them out for the Road Race and they were good. VERY sweet, but good - all that experimenting... The texture was super moist and they were like little pillows of air. I think I will do more research and some conversions and try these suckers again. Thanks to Lizzie for a new, more exotic baked good, a cool new pan, and for just being a bad ass friend.













The Aussie and Mahones out for a night on
the town instead of baking Friands - oops.

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