Strawberry and Almond Frangipane Cakes
By: Sudha
Published: Thursday, December 10, 2009 - 6:05pm

Ingredients




3 tablespoons plain flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
100 grams ground almonds
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
1 egg yolk
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
150 grams cold unsalted butter,cubed
140 grams castor sugar
15 smalls pieces of sweet ripe strawberries(cut into  parts)

Preparation

1 Lightly grease and flour the muffin pans or cupcake tins. 2 Grease even it’s a non stick muffin pans so that the cakes comes out easily. 3 Preheat oven to 180C. 4 Sift flour, baking powder and salt together and mix with almonds. 5 Set aside. 6 Beat eggs ,egg yolk and vanilla together and set aside. 7 Cream butter and sugar together until pal and fluffy , about 3-4mins with a cake mixer or 5 mins by hand. 8 Gradually trickle in egg mixture ,beating constantly. 9 Once all the egg has been added, fold in almond mixture by hand. 10 Divide batter between muffin tins. 11 Add a tsp full of batter on the mould , drop in a few pieces of cut strawberries and then top it with more batter . 12 Bake for 20-22 mins or until golden brown.

About


Frangipane pronounced:FRAN-jup-payn or FRAWN-zhee-pan is a rich pastry cream flavored with ground almonds and used to fill or top pastries and cakes. The name has a very unusual origin. In the 16th century an Italian nobleman, Marquis Muzio Frangipani, created a perfume for scenting gloves. It was popular in Paris, and pastry cooks tried to capture this popular scent in desserts; hence the birth of frangipane. Later, when the perfume was added to an almond cream dessert, the resulting delicacy was also dubbed frangipane.
This buttery little treats is idle for high tea gathering and tastes yummy in ones mouth!!The idle fruit would be ripe sweet raspberries ,but since it was not available here, I have used strawberries .You can also use ripe peaches, apricots or plums.But my personal opinion is the cake was tasty itself without the fruits. I did make half the batch without the fruits.