cherry & hazelnut friands

I received a handful of food related gifts over Christmas and the one that I've dug into very quickly is my copy of 'Poh's Kitchen' which mum bought me in conjuction with 3 Poh DVDs. I'm not that big a fan; there's just that something about Poh which makes me love her and well it's great to see how happy she is whilst she cooks. It's uncanny how she laughs at everything and it turns out her recipes are actually rather good!

'Poh's Kitchen' is half split between savoury and sweet recipes. I've tried three sweet recipes from the book now and they've all turned out really well. My first recipe was the cherry & hazelnut friands which earned me a handful of brownie points from the boy; he absolutely loves friands.

Preheat oven to 170 degrees. Grease a 12 hole friand pan with melted butter. In large bowl, combine together 60g plain flour, 185g sifted icing sugar, 1 tsp ground cinnamon, 110g hazelnut meal, 180g unsalted butter and 6 lightly beaten egg whites. Stir with a whisk until there are no lumps.

Distribute the batter into the friand tin (I only managed to get 11). Then poke in 4-5 drained morello cherries into each friand (about 400g drained). Bake for about 15 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre of the friand comes out clean. 

Rest for 5-10 minutes before turning out onto a cooling rack. Try not to be too anxious and pry these out when they first come out of the oven. After resting, you'll find that the friand falls away from the sides making it a lot easier to turn out.

Have a taste and see what you think!

This is probably the first friand recipe I've made at home where the friand hasn't stuck to the pan or burnt to a crisp on the sides. Loved the colour on these friands as they came out of the oven and you know what, they taste bloody good too! 

You could say that I'm a little addicted to cherries as a couple of days later I went and made another recipe with cherries in it!