RHC: Financiers au Chocolat (Chocolate Ingots)

I somehow got stuck on the idea of baking these chocolate financiers last weekend in addition to the Coffee Chiffonlets. And in addition to trying out a new multigrain waffle recipe Sunday morning. Hmmm...lots of time in the kitchen, an indicator of stress in other parts of my life. Yep....

Stress, chocolate. It's a natural pairing in my world. Marie had baked these back in June before the Heavenly Cake Bake-along started, so I had them on my list of cakes to make when the urge struck for extra baking.

Despite having found many of the pitfalls of the financier recipe section in Rose's Heavenly Cakes back when the Peanut Butter Ingots were the cake-of-the-week, I still had a couple of problems. This time I remembered that despite the unclear (well, to me) wording, the financier batter is supposed to be refrigerated for an hour before baking. I also recalled my feeling that my taste buds can't distinguish buerre noisette from plain old melted butter in a cake with other flavors (peanut butter, praline, or chocolate), and so skipped the butter-browning. I forgot, however, how easy it is to get on the wrong page and start baking from a different financier recipe. Oh, well, the extra 25 grams of sugar didn't seem to hurt anything, and neither did the different order of combining the ingredients. <g>

I took several other short-cuts (it was the second cake of the weekend). I used Trader Joe's almond meal instead of grinding my own. Thanks to the page mix-up, I then mixed in the sugar, flour, cornstarch, and baking powder, added the cocoa, then stirred in the egg whites before turning to the mixer. It did make it a one-bowl cake, of sorts. I thought about chopping up some chocolate-covered espresso beans and using them in in lieu of the optional caramelized cacao nibs (which would have been beyond my level of effort even if I did have cacao beans in-house), but decided to just let the financiers speak for themselves. Looking back at Marie's post, I think I'll have to find cacao nibs and try these again.

Tasting results: lovely little chocolate cakes. A nice light texture, not at all in the dense chocolate cake class, but with the very buttery taste of financiers and a good amount of chocolatey flavor. I haven't shared these with the Folks Next Door yet--will do that tonight.