Little Tiger Cakes

Tiger Cake aka Financier Tigre

I first had these delightful little cakes at Douceur de France, a great little French restaurant-bakery in Marietta, Georgia. It's dense little cake with chocolate sprinkles and a dollop of dark chocolate ganache in a little divot on top. The cake is moist, flavorful, just sweet enough, and with just enough chocolate to satisfy any chocolate fan.

Since I don't live near there, and since I love to bake, I've tried making these a couple of times. The first time I had to use a mini muffin tin, and those little cakes tasted good, but didn't look good at all.

I finally splurged and purchased two silicone baked donut molds at a Chinese kitchen store in San Francisco where I was visiting my cousin. What I discovered when I made these was that I needed to wash the mold by hand, as opposed to putting it in the dishwasher. The dishwasher left behind a residue that the batter stuck to, despite the wet paper towel wipe-down I gave it.

After an ugly first batch, I made a half batch for these blog pics. I buttered and floured 5 of the 6 cups. All six popped out beautifully, so next time, I don't think I'll bother with the butter and flour treatment. I'll just need to wash these molds by hand each time. Easy peasy.

I used regular all purpose flour in the batter, but I think this recipe would be fine with any gluten free all purpose flour if you need to make these gluten free. 

Enough said. Here's the recipe.

Tiger Cakes
    --Adapted from OliviaPatisse.com


The Cake Ingredients:

• 150 grams of butter
• 150 grams of egg whites
• 170 grams of icing sugar
• 100 grams of almond flour
• A pinch of salt
• 50 grams of all-purpose flour
• 60 grams of chocolate vermicelli/sprinkles

Ganache Ingredients:

• 10 Dove Dark Chocolate Promises, chopped into small pieces (or 80 grams good dark chocolate chopped into pieces)
• 100 grams heavy cream

Instructions:

Make the brown butter first by putting the butter in a medium pan over medium heat and letting it melt. When it stops crackling, remove the pan from the heat and pour melted butter into a heat-proof bowl to cool completely.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. If you are concerned about the cakes sticking, butter and flour the individual cake cups in the silicone baking mold/pan.

In a large bowl, whisk the egg whites with the icing sugar. Add the almond flour and the salt. Add the all-purpose flour and the chocolate vermicelli. Then stir in the cooled butter (emphasis on “cooled” because warm or hot butter will melt the chocolate vermicelli).

Fill silicone donut baking pans ¾ full of the batter.

Bake at 350 degrees for about 19-20 minutes.

Cool for 10 minutes in the pan before gently turning out onto a wire cooling rack.

While cakes cool, prepare the chocolate ganache: in a small pan over medium low heat, bring the cream to a simmer. Place the chopped chocolate in a heat-proof bowl and pour the heated cream over the chocolate. Allow to sit for about 5 minutes and then stir until chocolate is melted and ganache is smooth.

Pipe or spoon a puddle of liquid ganache into the center divot of each cake. Allow to cool until ganache has somewhat firmed up.


Makes 12 little cakes

That's the browned butter in the white bowl, top right.

The chocolate vermicelli goes in before the browned butter.

I wish you could smell this browned butter. Mmm.

On the left are the sad messed up ones from the first batch.