I found myself looking around for a recipe that required almond flour. It had been sometime since I have used any of the flour and that bag seemed to always be staring back at me, even though I packed it in the freezer.
I landed on a unique recipe for tea cakes that used the almond flour in the batter. The other good thing that caught my eye was that these little cakes had mini chocolate chips in them. They were made in dome molds, but I decided to make them in my pan which had mini 1/2 circle cavities. You can make these in muffin tins as well.
The batter does have a strange consistency, but the cakes turned out wonderful. They were like little pound cakes, with a tight crumb and very buttery. The crowd did like them and they made for such a great presentation. A nice dessert with afternoon tea or coffee. This recipe makes 16 muffin sized cakes or 12 cakes using the 1/2 circle pan.
Tiger Tea Cakes
adapted from Paris Sweets
Ingredients/ Cakes
1/3 cup flour
2 1/4 cup ground almonds or almond flour
3/4 cup sugar
5 oz mini chocolate chips
1 stick plus 7 tbs butter
1 1/2 tbs light corn syrup
6 egg whites, room temperature
Ingredients/Topping
5 oz bittersweet chocolate
1 stick of butter
3/4 cup heavy cream (for swirl on top)
Whisk the egg whites lightly. Then add the corn syrup, ground almonds, sugar and the flour. Mix until batter becomes smooth. Cover top of bowl with plastic wrap and place in fridge for a minimun of 2 hours and maximum of overnight.
15 minutes before chilling time is complete, preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Also butter the interior of the cavities of your pans, making sure there is capacity of 16.
In a small saucepan, melt the butter. Remove from heat. Take batter out of the fridge and pour the warm butter into the batter. Stir until all of the butter is incorporated. Once the batter is back to room temperature, mix in the chocolate chips.
Fill each muffin cavity with about 3 tbs of batter. Once all batter is in the pans, place in oven and bake until golden on the edges. This should take about 15-20 minutes. Remove from oven and let cool for about 3 minutes. Then transfer cakes from pans to rack to finish cooling.
While the cakes are cooling, you can prepare the topping. Melt butter and bring to a boil. Remove from heat and spoon off the foamy layer on top. Pour the yellow butter into a bowl leaving the milky residue on the bottom of the pot. Your bowl holds the clarified butter.
In a double boiler, melt the 5 oz of bittersweet chocolate. Once melted, mix in the clarified butter. Place the cooling rack with the cakes over a shallow rimmed baking sheet lined with wax paper. Pour the chocolate glaze over the cakes, making sure all areas are covered.
Place in fridge for 1 hour to allow the glaze to set. Then beat the whipped cream and pipe a small swirl in the center of each cake. Now they are ready to serve.
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