As the longest and hottest summer I have ever known in the Northern Hemisphere stretched through August and into September, then past the first week of October, the chorus of voices wishing away the heat and the long lazy days grew ever-louder. It’s now cold and dreary once again, and dark, so very very dark, at 4pm, where a few short months ago it was light and shimmery past 10 o’clock. The only real upside to cold nights in, frankly, is that it becomes tolerable to bake again, whereas flicking the oven on over the summer was torturous.
People often gravitate towards the rich, heavy, sticky and chocolatey in winter – and why not? – but I think there’s a place for light, refreshing and zesty, too, if only to remind one of summer days past. This trio of petit fours showcases some lovely floral, fruity and sharp flavours that are lovely together, but would work beautifully on their own too.
I decided to make friands (and influence people) because, as usual, I had a large jar of egg whites sitting in the back of the fridge, waiting for their day (I don’t know quite how I manage to acquire so many egg whites, but a recipe which uses up a great quantity is always useful). Coincidentally I picked up a Waitrose recipe card for friands around the same time I was planning my three bakes and have just tweaked the recipe a bit to showcase raspberries – I think the sharpness of raspberries works so well with the richness of butter and ground almonds which are a feature of friands.
I’ve been trying to crack macarons for years, though I have admittedly not applied myself particularly diligently to this task. As usual, the results were pretty inconsistent, although this batch produced better shells than usual and I got a few very pretty, completely perfect macarons out of them for a change. I used this recipe for macarons with honey buttercream, tinting the shells butter yellow with a dab of food colouring paste.
The prettiness of the pistachio rose water madeleines, and the opportunity to use my mini tin, were reason enough to try them out. They were my favourite of the three bakes – the good pinch of salt balanced out the sweetness and mouth-filling floral notes and made them incredibly moreish.
This post is part of my challenge to bake my way through all the challenges of the Great British Bake Off. The challenge below is the signature challenge for week nine (patisserie week) of series three: three types of petit fours – twelve of each