I adore Friands, to me they are a glorified cup cake, and just a bit special. A gourmet French cake traditionally made with almonds and egg whites. Since almonds are high in both salicylates and amines and not suitable for the failsafe diet, I decided to try making a friand based on cashews. I was pleasantly surprised by the outcome, and even more surprised that two my kids loved them (one wouldn’t even try, but that’s normal… so doesn’t count, lol)!
In trying to make these a bit more interesting and not just a “pear” cake, I decided to put a crumble type of mixture on top. You could make it quite easily without the crumble, but it does give it a nice touch and I think made it more appealing to my kids rather than just the pear been the focus.
Makes 12 Friands
Crumble ingredients:
40g Cashews
80g Butter or nuttelex
40g Rice Malt syrup
90g Spelt Flour
50g Oats
10g Physillum Husks
Friand ingredients:
150g Cashews
40g Quinoa
200g Sugar
40g Spelt flour
20g Self raising flour
5 Egg whites
170g Butter, melted
1 Fresh pear, peeled and diced.
Pre-heat oven to 190 deg. Grease friand tray or muffin pans.
First make the crumble. Place cashews into TM bowl and chop for 2 sec on speed 7. Set aside. Place nuttelex and rice malt syrup in TM bowl and melt slightly 1 minutes 50 deg speed 3. Add remaining crumble ingredients and mix for 10 seconds on speed 3.
In a clean dry bowl, place cashews, quinoa and sugar into the Thermomix bowl. Mill for 20 seconds on speed 10. Add flour, mix to combine for 3 sec on speed 3. Add egg whites and mix… 20 sec speed 3. Add butter and mix for 30 seconds on speed 3.
Fill each friand mould to ½ full with mixture. Top with diced pears and sprinkle a generous coating of the crumble mixture on top. Bake in oven for 20 minutes or until cooked through, test with a skewer, if it comes out clean it is cooked. Allow to cool for 5 minutes before gently removing from pan with a knife.
Dust lightly with icing sugar. Serve as is or with a dollop of cream. Also tasty with custard.
Notes: One thing you will need to be aware of is that the daily allowance of cashew while on the elimination phase of the failsafe diet is 10 per day… so it may be hard to resist since they are so divine, but just have a half or one per day.
If you have any crumble left over, it great sprinkled on ice cream. Plus I will be adding another simple recipe shortly using the crumble mix again.
These look so good! Will have to make them soon 🙂
I am not sure if I can find rice malt syrup here in Norway. Do you think I can use golden syryp?
Hi Maggie, rice malt syrup is easier found in health food shops than supermarkets over here. Either golden syrup or maple syrup should be fine. Enjoy! 🙂
I made these for the first time. We halved the sugar and they were still delicious. Thanks for sharing. I would never have come up with this as I didn’t think there was anything to reace the almond.