Financiers

Here's a great Spanish twist on a French favourite which is always popular.

Financiers are small ingot shaped petite fours which traditionally were made in the Paris finance district.  Usually sweet, the modern day ones can be savoury and in this case, I am making three Mediterranean savouries.

All three are Spanish inspired and two I will be using Fragata garlic stuffed olives and also their Pimiento Piquillo.  The third filling, I will be using sun blushed tomatoes, and all ingredients are chopped into much smaller pieces (although not finely) as the Financiers are quite small.

As you can see from the picture above, each batch has a convenient 15 portions and as 45 little savoury gems are a good number for guests that are to arrive in just under three hours, I need to get on.

A word of warning, you will need two or three bowls for this recipe as it's pretty heavy on washing up.  A further three small mixing bowls for this particular recipe as we are going to split the basic recipe for their separate flavourings.

The basic recipe for this amount:

125 grams of butter
100 grams of ground almonds
50 grams of plain flour
one teaspoon of baking powder
3 large eggs (or 4 medium) which have been separated
1/2 teaspoon of salt (if required)

The filling should be no more than 150 grams for the above quantities of mixture.  In this particular case I am obviously using a 50 grams of each of olives, pimiento and tomatoes.

The butter is usually melted in a pan until it starts to turn a deeper colour.  Other recipes I have seen cream the butter with a small addition of olive oil.  Either is okay, the latter more appropriate for savoury ingots.

Whilst you are melting the butter, switch the oven on to 190c.  Once the butter is melted, take it off the heat and allow to cool slightly.

Meanwhile, beat the egg yolk and then add, slowly, the melted butter and whisk until the consistency of a light mayonnaise. 

Sift your dry ingredients together (you can use just ground almonds, although you may need an extra egg white) and then add, again slowly, to the egg mixture.  The mixture will get to the point where you think it will be too thick.  Persevere as the butter really does have the capacity to help combine this.  However, you are have problems a small dash of tepid water relaxes the mixture.

In a separate bowl, whisk the egg whites to soft peaks and then add half of this to the mixture.  Use a metal spoon to combine this.

Now split the mixture into three and add the first "filling", combine and fold in a third of the remaining egg whites.  Repeat the process for the other two batches.

Now, with a teaspoon, fill your mould.  Each batch should fill the 15 ingot mould perfectly.

Place in the middle of the oven for 15 minutes or until just turning brown on top.  Allow to cool for five minutes (they do cool off very quickly) and then get the mould ready for your next batch. Placing the baked ingots on kitchen paper.

From beginning to end the for 45 little explosion of flavour, I've got the timing down to about an hour and a half.  Of which an hour of this is cooking and cooling time, as I only have one mould.

Thank you to Fragata for the above ingredients, please see go and visit them at http://www.facebook.com/FragataUK/ or fragata.co.uk