Wednesday, December 15, 2010

HCB: Financier-Style Vanilla Bean Poundcake


I've been so busy with holiday baking lately that I haven't had time to post anything here. I'm going to try to play catch up over the next few days. I actually made these little cakes on Saturday afternoon because I had a big cookie decorating project to do Saturday evening and Sunday (and still more to do Tuesday evening).

If we thought last week's cake was simple this one was even easier to make. I had ordered my financier pan a few weeks ago, but I didn't realize that it was actually a mini financier pan so mine were about half the size they should have been. I guess I'll have to get the regular size one sometime. The batter came together pretty quickly. The only part that took much time was pulling out the food processor to process the sugar and vanilla bean. I also recently purchased a larger piping tip so I was able to pipe the batter into the pan. I had a little extra batter so I baked it in one of my holiday cookie pans (that I use for candy not cookies), but they stuck to the pan a little so the details were lost.


I guess I overfilled them a bit because the ran over the edges, but I just trimmed off the excess. For some reason those little pieces that you trim off always seem to taste better than the rest of the cake.


And, in case you want a sneak preview of what ate up all of my time, here are my finished cookies. I will try to get another post up later this week about the cookies.


6 comments:

  1. Oh wow, your cookies look wonderful!!!!!!! As for your financiers, I didn't know there was a mini pan. I had to cut the tops off mine too, and yes, they were very tasty.

    :)
    ButterYum

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  2. You been busy. .that is A LOT of cookies! and it looks like it was A LOT of work! yikes!

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  3. Andrea, congrats on the cookies! Those look super awesome. Quite a bunch of different decorations that you do. I LOVE how you decorated the sleigh! Those swirls are awesome! I look forward to the cookie post :).

    I see some luster/disco dust in there. How do you like playing with those. I thought of buying some but hesitated. I don't want to still be covered with them for days.

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  4. ButterYum, thanks! I thought the pan was the normal size, but when I read the measurements in the recipe mine were about half the size.

    Monica, it was a lot of work. I made both sugar and gingerbread cookies. Next time I will definitely simplify by doing fewer designs.

    Jenn, thanks! I saw that idea for the sleigh in a holiday cookie book. That was one of my favorites also.

    For the gold and silver luster dust I mixed it with clear vanilla and used a small paint brush to paint it on the cookies. That was a lot less messy than normal dry dusting. You can do the dry dusting with cookies if they're still warm. They need some moisture to make it stick. With fondant or gumpaste you can steam the areas that you add dust to get it to set.

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  5. Andrea, thanks for the idea to mix with vanilla. Royal icing dries really fast here so it'd be easier to apply it this way.

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  6. Oh my goodness, the cookies are adorable!! And so are the financiers. Great job.

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