BROWN BUTTER PISTACHIO AND POPPY SEED FINANCIERS

Adapted from La Tartine Gourmande

Yield:  7-8 muffin-size financiers

There are some blogs that simply blow me away; some women whose photographs of bundled up children frolicking through hills of lavender in the French Countryside make me long for the snapshots of their lives.  You see, Times Square crowds and Washington Square Park don’t photograph quite the same.

One particular blogger and cookbook writer is the lovely Beatrice Peltre.  She writes a blog called La Tartine Gourmande and if you’ve never taken a peak into her world, I encourage you to now.  We had a Female French Food show this season and invited her all the way from France to grace our New York stage with her whimsy and beauty.  She made these scrumptious financiers and that sealed the deal:  We were in love.

Financiers are typically made with butter and almond meal, and here she puts her own twist on them by using rice flour and pistachios.  The cardamom is a perfect compliment to the nutty brown butter, and the poppy seeds give you a fun little pop of texture.  You will see that these are naturally gluten-free as well.  I should note that I tweaked a couple of things (slightly cutting the butter, and swapping out ground cardamom and vanilla extract to make it more accessible, but feel free to use 3 cardamom pods and a vanilla bean if you’d like.)

I hope this is just one of the many simple, beautiful dishes you will try of Ms. Peltre’s.  If only the fields of lavender could be recreated with such ease…

½ cup shelled, unsalted green pistachios

6 tablespoons unsalted butter

½ teaspoon ground cardamom

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1/3 cup white rice flour

2 tablespoons poppy seeds

½ cup cane sugar

½ teaspoon sea salt

4 large egg whites, beaten lightly until foamy

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Line a muffin pan with 8 paper liners and set aside.

Using a clean coffee grinder or mini food processor, grind the pistachios into a fine powder and set aside.

In a small pot, melt the butter over medium heat until it turns light brown in color; remove from the heat.  Add the cardamom and vanilla (it will bubble up at this point, that’s from the alcohol in the vanilla and it’s just fine.)  Set aside.

In a bowl, combine the rice flour, pistachio meal, poppy seeds, sugar, and salt.  Beat in the egg whites until smooth, then stir in the melted butter.  Work quickly.

Dived batter among the muffin tins, place the financiers in the oven and bake for 20 minutes, or until a knife inserted into the middle of a cake comes out dry.  Remove from the oven and cool completely.

*My Two Cents:  You can swap out the cane sugar, which is just a more raw and pure form of granulated sugar, with regular white sugar with no problem.

These can be made in mini-muffin tins for a great bite size party snack.