Recipe: Green tea financiers

Dorie Greenspan’s latest book, Baking Chez Moi (Houghton Mifflin), is the prolific baker’s ode to French baking (Greenspan has had a home in Paris for many years). Having written not only many of her own books but also books with Parisian pastry chef Pierre Herme, you can guess how much and how well she writes about this subject.

Try making these matcha financiers — coloured beautifully green not by dyes but by the Japanese green tea — for a post-holiday treat. Who says the sweets must stop because the tinsel has come down?

MATCHA FINANCIERS

From Dorie Greenspan’s Baking Chez Moi. Makes 30 mini cakes.

Note: Matcha is a very expensive tea, and not one you’re likely to find on every supermarket shelf. It comes in grades, and the highest grade is unnecessary for baking. Look for a culinary- or commercial-grade tea; I use Harney & Sons Matcha Culinary Grade.

Ingredients

1 1/2 sticks (12 tbs; 170g) unsalted butter, cut into chunks

2/3 cup (90g) all-purpose flour

1 1/2 tsp matcha green tea (see above)

Pinch of fine sea salt

1 cup (200g) sugar

1 cup (100g) almond or hazelnut flour

6 large egg whites, at room temperature, lightly beaten

Steps

Heat the butter in a small saucepan over medium heat until it starts to boil, then boil for 1 minute; it may colour ever so slightly, but you don’t want it to brown. Remove the pan from the heat and set it aside (you want the butter to be warm when you add it).

Whisk the all-purpose flour, matcha and salt together in a small bowl.

Using a flexible spatula, stir the sugar and nut flour together in a large bowl. Gradually add the egg whites, stirring to moisten the dry ingredients.

When all the whites are in, give the mix a few vigorous stirs. Stir in the all-purpose flour mixture, mixing only until it’s evenly blended, then start adding the melted butter, a little at a time, folding and stirring the batter until all the butter is in, a feat that will seem miraculous. You’ll have a pea-green batter with a sheen to it.

Press a piece of plastic film against the surface of the batter and refrigerate for at least 1 hour. (The batter can be refrigerated for up to 3 days.)

When you’re ready to bake: Centre a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 205C. Butter the cups of a mini muffin tin (or tins; you can make as many or as few financiers as you want — there’s enough batter for 30), dust with flour and tap out the excess (or use baker’s spray, a mix of vegetable oil and flour).

Spoon the batter into the muffin cups, filling them almost to the top.

Bake the financiers for 12 to 14 minutes, or until they have crowned and feel springy to the touch; their tops may have cracked, and that’s fine. They’ll be browned around the edges (and on the bottom) and a beautiful green in the centre.

Remove the tin(s) from the oven, wait 1 minute, then tap them against the counter to encourage the financiers to tumble out. Pry any stragglers from their molds with a table knife. Transfer the financiers to a rack and let cool until they are just warm or at room temperature.

Excerpted from Baking Chez Moi, © 2014 by Dorie Greenspan. Reproduced by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. All rights reserved.

— Los Angeles Times