The history of financiers is full of poetry and uncertainty. Some claim that the name comes from the mold in the shape of a small gold bar, other that it was originally eaten by traders at the Paris stock exchange as a finger food.
Note that financiers are cake, not pastry.

It is thus best made in a financier mold, but you can do it in Madeleine pans too; they will disappear just as fast.

Ingredients

• 50 g. almond powder or almond meal (about 1/2 cup)
• 50 g. all purpose flour (between 1/3 and 1/2 a cup)
• 150 g granulated sugar ( 3/4 cup)
• 75 g butter (about 6.5 tbsp)
• 4 egg whites
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• a dash of salt.

preheat oven to 325

In another mixing bowl, put the dry ingredients (but the salt) and the vanilla.

Melt the butter in the microwave. 45 seconds should it. The official recipe calls for beurre noisette but with so much almond, i am not sure it will make any difference. if you insist on doing it right, put the butter in a saucepan and cook it on low to medium heat until about 1/4 of it evaporates. The milk solids will separate from the butter milk and sink to the bottom and start browning.

In a mixing bowl, beat the egg white and dash of salt to fairly hard peak.

Add the whipped egg whites to the dry ingredients and combine carefully.

Add the butter and combine.

Spoon into the molds.

bake for about 15 minutes and unmold. Let them cool upside down so they can dry out a bit.

This is the cake i did when i was a kid. Super simple and super delicious.
The beauty of it is you don’t need any measuring tool but a yogurt pot!

Ingredients

• 1 yogurt
• 1 yogurt of oil
• 2 yogurts of sugar
• 3 yogurts of flour
• 1 tsp baking powder

Preheat the over to 350F
In a mixing bowl, put a yogurt.
Use the yogurt pot to measure 1 yogurt pot of oil, 2 pot of sugar, 3 pot of flour, 3 eggs.
Add the baking powder and mix it all together.
In your baking pan (any will do: round, square, Darth Vader shaped,…) put a coat of fat (oil or butter) then a light coat of flour, so the cake will not stick.
Put the batter in the pan and cook for 30 minutes. It’s cooked when you can push a knife in the cake and it comes out clean.
Wait a little bit before taking the cake off the mold.

You can flavor to cake with vanilla extract, lemon zest, etc.

You can color the cake with liquid food coloring.

I also like to put some canned pineapple rings in the pan before pouring the batter. Present upside down.

Madeleines are small cakes that used to be sold at the train station of Commercy, France.
They are shell-shaped and convenient to eat without being messy.
I strongly recommend silicone molds as aluminum or Tefal makes it difficult to peel from.

Ingredients

• 150 g all purpose flour (just over 1 cup)
• 1 stick butter
• 150 g granulated sugar (just over 1/2 cup)
• 2 large eggs
• 1 tsp baking powder
• zest of 1 lemon or 1 tsp vanilla extract

Tools

• mixing bowl
• microwave oven
• silicone Madeleine pans

Melt the butter for 1 minute in the microwave oven.
Beat the eggs and sugar together until it whitens (maybe a minute.)
Add baking powder then flour and butter (alternate adding a bit of flour and a bit of butter add the flavoring: lemon zest or vanilla.
Put the mixing bowl in the fridge for at least 30 minutes, preferably 2 hours or even overnight.
Preheat oven at 450F.
Spoon the batter ( i use a desert spoon and my pinkie) into the molds. You should have enough for a little over 18 madeleines (if you a make double batch and use 3 sheets of 18, it works well.)
Bake for about 5 minutes at 450F. Then lower the temperature to 350 for 45 more minutes. Check for color, if they look pale, leave them for another minute.

Some recipes omit the baking powder, you will have to beat the sugar and eggs for a lot longer and be careful when adding the flour and butter. Never tried.

You can split the batter in halves and flavor one side with vanilla the other with chocolate and spoon both in each mold.

Refrigerating the batter helps give a thermal shock to the madeleines so to stay moist and have the traditional hump.

When they are done, wait a few minutes for the molds to cool down a bit then put the Madeleines on a grille to cool down and dry a bit. Store in an air-tight container.