Coffee and Pecan Financiers

 It wouldn't be a Nopi recipe if you didn't have to go out and buy something specially to make a dish and likely something you don't usually have and may not use again before it is past its use-by date. But I didn't expect it to be Horlicks, and apparently only available in large size containers. Guess I'll be having a warm drink at bedtime for a while. Interestingly (to me, anyway) it was only recently that Michael and his Bradfords book visited the home of Horlicks on Great British Train Journeys on the tele.

gathering the ingredients - like good chefs do

Actually using the coffee grinder to grind coffee

But I digress. Financiers are apparently so called because they are shaped like little gold bars but Yotam generously allows us to use muffin tins - I of course don't have a muffin tin anymore and was forced to use a friand tin. I'm sure it was OK though.

Step one was to roast the pecans in the oven and the only chance to stuff that up was to forget about them, something I'm quite likely to do but somehow avoided it this time. I was also in danger of overdoing the "golden brown and nutty smell" of the buerre noisette . Was it OK. I chose to chance it.

chopping the pecans

mise-en-place for the coffee cream

The butter then had to be strained and cooled. Egg whites were whipped before adding to the mixture of icing sugar, Horlicks, flour, ground almonds, baking powder and ground coffee. In went the butter and crushed pecans. The smell was divine. The mixture was set aside in the fridge for a couple of hours. They have to be baked and then served immediately and you can leave the mixture overnight if necessary.

The cooffe cream is made by mixing espresso coffee, pecans and brown sugar cooking it for about 4 minutes. The opportunity existed to make the coffee too strong or weak and  reduce by half is another instruction I could botch up. Once cooled, the cream was added, mixture strained to remove the pecans and it also served time in the fridge to thicken up.

The coffee cream had to be whipped before serving, and of course the financier mixture placed in the moulds and cooked. Delicious. The coffee cream in particular was amazing. Ottolenghi reckons you have to eat them right away but I have frozen some and they reheat really well.