The banana adds an extra degree of moistness and ‘stickiness’ to the basic financier recipe. To make these financiers even more healthy, you can incorporate walnuts into the mixture. Walnuts contain the amino acid l-arginine, which offers multiple vascular benefits to people with heart disease, or those who have increased the risk of heart disease due to multiple cardiac risk factors.
In a large bowl combine your powdered sugar, flours and almond meal/flour. The almond meal can be store-bought or made at home. Just lightly toast about 5 ounces of slivered almonds in a 375 F oven for about ten minutes then grind them in a food processor.
Whisk it all together, then add the egg whites. Whisk those in, then start drizzling in your hot browned butter. You can add the blackened solids if you’d like…some people to consider them essential, but I don’t. I leave them out.
Lastly, whisk in a little almond extract, if you want to use a little lemon zest, you can add it at this point. Spoon the batter into the forms, filling them a little more than halfway.
Bake for about 30 minutes at 180ndegrees Celcius. For smaller financiers bake at 450 for 5, then 400 for 5 then 5 with the oven off. They should look about like so.
Ingredients;
- 150g plain flour
- 120g ground almonds
- 100g sugar
- 1 heaped tsp baking powder
- 100g dark chocolate chips
- 1 tsp ground cinnamon
- 2 eggs
- 2 egg whites
- 3 ripe bananas
- 150g melted butter
- 2 tbsp flaked almonds for sprinkling
Instructions;
- Preheat the oven to 180°C. Mix together all the dry ingredients above, except the flaked almonds.
- Mash the bananas with a fork and gradually add them into the mix followed by the eggs and melted butter.
- Pour the mixture into silicone moulds (about 3/4, not fully to the top) and sprinkle with the flaked almonds.
- Bake for 20 minutes for the smaller cakes and for slightly larger cake moulds, 25-30 minutes.
- Once cooled slightly, turn the cakes out on to a wire tray.
