Sweet Treats – Lemon Curd and Blueberry Friands
The next time you make some lemon butter (lemon curd to those of you who don’t live in NSW or Queensland), save your egg whites and freeze them. I have an ice cube tray that, oddly, stores exactly half an egg white in each cube. I find this to be rather helpful when I need extra height in a lemon meringue or some more oomph in a pavlova, without having to sacrifice more yolks. It’s also supremely useful when making enough friand mixture for a large appetite.
And of course, friands are a wonderful way to showcase that lovely lemon butter you make. You DO make your own lemon butter, don’t you?
Makes 10
INGREDIENTS
240g butter, softened; 90g plain flour; 220g almond meal; 240g icing sugar; finely grated zest of one lemon; 6 egg whites at room temperature; 2 tbsp lemon curd (lemon butter); 1 punnet (130g) blueberries
METHOD
Preheat oven to 180°C.
Place butter in a small saucepan and melt over medium heat. Remove from the heat when you see small brown spots forming on the surface of the butter. Brush a little melted butter in 10 bases of a 12-cup friand tin or cupcake or muffin tin and reserve the rest.
Sift flour, almond meal and icing sugar into a bowl and stir through the lemon zest. Place the egg whites in another bowl and loosen them with a fork, just to break them up rather than to make them frothy.
Stir the egg whites and melted butter through the flour mixture.
Spoon the cake mixture into each friand tin to come three-quarters up the sides. Spoon half a teaspoon of lemon curd onto the top of each friand, then use a bamboo skewer or toothpick to gently swirl it through the mixture. Top each friand with a few blueberries.
Bake for 25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into a friand comes out clean. Cool on a cake rack and dust with a little icing sugar before serving.
COST
$12.40 for 10 friands
I read this with interest because my lemon butter (lemon honey if you are from NZ!) uses the whole egg and not just the yolk. So I don’t need to save my whites when doing that. But this recipe sounds and looks yummy all the same.
Making some more Lemon Butter tomrrow – so thanks! – is it pure icing sugar or icing sugar mixture? – also is it frozen blueberries or fresh? my lemon butter uses 4 whole eggs & 1 egg yolk
Either is fine, I used icing mixture for a budget option but gluten intolerant cooks may want to use pure icing sugar.
This looks fabulous! Any thoughts about how it would go using frozen blueberries? Would I need to add more flour to counter the extra liquid from the frozen berries, do you think?
Frozen berries are fine and shouldn’t affect the cooking time or a change in ingredients provided you only use a few in each friand. If in doubt, defrost them first and pat them dry before using.