Tag Archives: almonds

Plum-almond cake

Galette des Rois

French-style “Kings’ cake”

Between the 6th of January and the end of the month, French bakeries are filled with a special cake called galette des Rois. The cake is one of the ways that French people celebrate the Epiphany –the arrival of the Three Wise men– which happened on January 6th according to Christian tradition. This galette is a cake with a surprise, since there is one lucky charm, la fève, hidden inside. The person that gets the slice with the lucky charm becomes “the king/queen” for the day. French bakeries include a paper golden crown with the galette, which the king of the day is supposed to wear. The epiphany is celebrated in Spain as well in a similar way, by eating the roscón de Reyes (“Kings’ donut or Kings’ cake“) The roscón is a crown-shaped brioche decorated with candied fruits and filled with pastry cream or whipped cream.

There are different types of the galette de rois in France. I’ll share with you the traditional one, which is a round cake of puff pastry with a dense filling of frangipane (almond paste). Next year, I plan to bake –and share with you!– the Spanish version of the roscón de Reyes.

galette de rois

Yield: 8 portions

Ingredients:

2 rolls of puff pastry
100g butter
100g sugar
125g ground almond
2 eggs + 1 egg to spread on top of the cake
2 tea spoons of amaretto or rhum

Raspberry financier

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Almond financier with raspberries

I’ve wanted to prepare financiers for quite a while – I always enjoyed eating them but never dared to try to bake them. Next to the madeleine, the financier is probably the most popular little French cake, common for breakfast or afternoon snacking (or “goûter”). It is made of finely ground almonds, egg whites, butter and powdered sugar. The name comes from their shape: they are usually formed to look like a brick of gold. If they come out well, they should have crusty exterior and a moist interior, tasting almost as if they were filled with almond paste. To give them some summer taste, I’ve added raspberries and changed a bit the traditional form…and yes, they still taste very good!

raspberry financiers

Yield: 10 small size financiers

Ingredients:

110g powder sugar
100g butter (room Temperature)
45g flour
60g fine ground almonds
3 egg whites
20 raspberries – 2 for each
optional: 1 tea spoon of amaretto (my personal touch )

No butter, no flour oat cookies

Time to be healthy

Actually, I started to search for no flour cookies because my sister can’t eat any wheat products. Lately, it seems that there are more and more people close to myself that have some product intolerance. Thus, this recipe is dedicated to all my loved ones in that situation: Livija, Elina Evelina, and Marian. I’m offering several alternatives to prepare these cookies – just pick the one you can eat or that sounds better to you

no flour, no butter cookies

Yield: 20-30 cookies depending on size

Ingredients:

150g oatmeal
150g of mixed nuts & raisins of different kinds – select the nuts and proportion as you wish
1 medium size ripe banana or 100g of applesauce
1 egg or 2 tablespoons cornstarch (you may add some more applesauce/ banana if you use cornstarch)
100g of peanut butter
100g of sugar – you can vary the amount of sugar you put in, the more you put the crunchier and sweeter they’ll be