Roasted Rhubarb Financier
A light frangipane batter made with egg whites and browned butter, topped with strips of sugary roasted rhubarb.
Ingredients
For the roasted rhubarb
- 600 g rhubarb
- 60 g granulated sugar
For the financier batter
- 240 g unsalted butter
- 122 g ground almonds
- 122 g plain flour
- 288 g icing sugar
- 288 g egg whites
- 20 g vanilla sugar or golden caster sugar
- Icing sugar for dusting
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350F / 180C. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper, and gentle grease a 9-inch loose-bottomed fluted tart ring.
- Trim the end of the rhubarb and cut into strips about 5 to 6 inches long and 1/2 inch wide. Place on the baking sheet with parchment and sprinkle the sugar over the top. Roast the rhubarb for about 15 minutes until it’s tender, but still has some bite and structure.
- Remove the rhubarb from the oven and let it cool completely.
- For the financier, lower your oven to 325F / 160C.
- To start, place the butter in a heavy-bottomed saucepan over medium heat. Let the butter cook until the liquid becomes a light brown colour and the milk solids on the bottom of the pan are a dark brown. Remove from the heat and pour the brown butter in a clean bowl to cool slightly. This should produce about 206 g of brown butter, caused by some loss of moisture. You might have slightly more than this in which case pour and set aside 206g of brown butter.
- Meanwhile, sift the plain flour and icing sugar into a large bowl along with the ground almonds. Whisk to combine. Add the egg whites and beat with an electric whisk until everything is incorporated. Scrape the bottom and sides of the bowl with a spatula {and give it one last stir} to make sure there aren’t any small pockets of dry ingredients lingering at the bottom.
- Once the brown butter is no longer hot (warm is okay but you don’t want it scrambling anything!), slowly pour it into the almond and egg white mixture with your whisk on low speed.
- Pour the financier batter into the tart ring. Arrange the rhubarb on the financier, layering the strips of rhubarb over each other a little bit. You can make whatever design you want, but I went with something simple. Sprinkle the vanilla sugar over top the rhubarb.N.B. If you don’t have vanilla sugar, you can use golden caster instead.
- Bake for about 1 hr 15 mins until the financier is golden brown in colour and a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out with a few crumbs sticking to it, but isn’t wet.
- Remove from the oven and let cool completely.
- To finish, dust the tart with sifted icing sugar and serve by itself or with a dollop of cream.