These scrumptious Christmas Mince Friands look wonderful plated up with some strawberries and lightly dusted with icing sugar for a festive afternoon tea. Or they make a great little Christmas gift. An added bonus is that they can easily be made Gluten Free.
Liz from Milly’s Kitchen has kindly allowed me to share the recipe and included a message:
I hope your friends love these – mine certainly do. And they are a lovely alternative to the typical mince pie.
To make it Gluten Free simply substitute the all-purpose flour with a good quality Gluten Free flour (Liz usually uses Edmonds).
Basic Friand Recipe
175 butter, melted and cooled
100g ground almonds
6 egg whites, lightly beaten with a fork to just loosen the whites slightly
2 teaspoons good vanilla extract
200g icing sugar, sifted
70g flour, sifted
Preheat the oven to 160C. Grease mini muffin tins with Wilton Cake release or butter.
Place the melted butter, ground almonds, egg whites, vanilla, icing sugar and flour in a large bowl and stir until just combined. Be careful not to over mix as this will cause the friands to ‘peak’ rather than have lovely flat tops. At this stage you can choose to either carry on and bake your friands or store them in a covered bowl in the fridge (for up to 3 days). Spoon the mixture into prepared pans – they should be just over half full. Top each friand with your filling of choice (a sliver of plum, a berry or 1/2 tsp of fruit mince).
Bake for 15-20 mins or until lightly golden and a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Allow to cool in the pans for about five minutes before turning out onto a rack to cool completely. These last well, refrigerated, for up to five days.
Variations: Christmas Mince or 1 cup fresh or frozen berries or tinned black plums, or peaches; etc.
I halved the recipe which made 12 little Christmas Mince Friands.
You can find more seasonal recipes from Milly’s here.
Reviews by Lyn Potter
Parent and grandparent, Avid traveler, writer & passionate home cook
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