Chocolate-centered Matcha Financiers

Matcha financier baked in muffin tin

I like matcha. I like financier. And I like white chocolate (the bonne idée). They go so well together with a cup of green tea in a leisurely Sunday afternoon. So I set out to make white chocolate-centered matcha financiers, a recipe from Dorie Greenspan’s Baking with Chez Moi. Needless to say, I had high hope for them. I have made financiers a few times before, including gluten-free ones.

For some reasons, they didn’t quite come together as I’d have liked. May be it’s a matter of expectations. I have made and tasted much better matcha financiers before. What’s off?

• The batter could have been lighter. Some recipes call for whisking the egg whites to form soft peaks. That could have made a difference. I was cognizant of that. It was too late, though, to change the plan as I started stirring in the butter. The batter got heavier and heavier.
• I missed the beurre noisette (the nutty brown butter) element in these cakes. The recipe calls for boiling the butter for 1 minutely only, but not until it gets brown.
• The bonne idée suggests adding chunks of white chocolate in the center of the batter when filling the mold. A similar idea to the soft-centered chocolate teacup cakes. White chocolate is sweet. Adding them made the financiers excessively sweet, in spite of the effort in reducing the sugar amount from 200g to 170g. I should have known!
• Dorie indicates that the batter is enough to make 20 to 30 mini-muffin size cakes. I got nine in the silicone financier mold, plus leftover batter for an extra one in the size of a standard muffin tin.

I must have an off day! My husband ate most of the financiers and reminded me, encouragingly, that the test kitchen approach of do-over should be my guide. Not sure whether I fully subscribe to that!

Other bakers at Tuesdays with Dorie (TWD) who use the same recipe might have better luck than I do. Don’t forget to check the blogroll at TWD to see how others have approached this recipe. Can’t wait to compare notes.

Matcha financiers with white chocolate chunks