Financiers

I have several baking and culinary goals, one of which is to master French pastries. While I do love desserts, I am by no means a chocolate lover. While I can handle chocolate in small doses and I do in fact have a small piece of dark chocolate every night with my tea, I would rather have a slice of lemon pound cake over a  slice of chocolate cake any day. This is precisely the reason why I am attracted to French pastries-they have a lot of cream based and sponge cake based desserts.   With this goal in mind, my first order of business was to make the Financier.

One theory says that the name Financier was derived from the fact that these little cakes became popular in the financial district of Paris. Another says because they are baked to resemble blocks of gold.

I made these  for a little get together I had and everyone  absolutely loved them. I think they were popular because they are a bit different from the ordinary sweets but not so different in flavor from our repertoire of tastes that it throws people off. This is the very first Financier recipe I have tried but it will not be the last. I already have about five other recipes waiting to be tried. However; as a verdict I would definitely recommend this recipe.

If you are interested in the recipe, it is from Patricia Wells and it can be found here!

Enjoy!