Lemon and blueberry Financier cake

I was so excited to be off work, on annual leaves today. Figure of speech?

My day began around 5.50am, just as usual, with the first food request of the day - No.2's breastfeed! But lucky we both fell back to sleep until 7.30am! Yay! Until I can vaguely hear "Maman, I'm hungry" from somewhere like on another planet... No.1 is awake. The day can start.
9am: direction to the doctor to get - I took the 'working mom special plan': every day off, I have the pleasure to see our doctor for one of my two boys when it's not myself!
Followed by the pharmacy, the bank, the post and the mall.
11 am: the kid show started in the mall (cause holidays). No.1 was so happy to watch it I couldn't refuse. Time for No.2 second breastfeed of the day... I really enjoyed sitting on the floor in the centre of the mall, with a baby breastfeeding and a big boy watching the magician with little stars in the eyes, in spite of what he made several requests for all sorts of naughty food.
12 pm: we're all home and starving! Of course, it's lunch time already! Fortunately I had some delish leftover of Paella (still need to find the time to post you the recipe as this dish was just stunning!)
1.30pm: No.2 Plunket appointment. I think that at that time I did not get a chance go wee-wee. Don't laugh at me I'm sure you already experience that!
2 pm: Back to the mall to change a faulty item bought the same morning.
3 pm: we are finally back home! for good! Just on time for a little dino snack, but nothing is ready yet.

I looked in the fridge and find a bowl with egg whites left from the day before that I needed to use. Perfect to test this appealing recipe with egg whites only: Financiers myrtilles/citron created by Camille from Cakes in the city. Despite the English name, this is a French blog. But don't worry - I have tested and translated this easy and quick recipe for you ;-)

Financiers are traditional French, small, light and moist cakes made from flour, ground almond, sugar, egg whites and browned butter. Camille proposed a blueberry and lemon version with a twist on its presentation: bake the financier in a large version and cut it into small pieces, just like brownies. Everybody loved these small cloudy and lemony bites.

Ingredients

For a 23 x 23 square cake tin. - 100g butter - 220g icing sugar* - 120g ground almond - 90g flour - 6 egg whites - zest of 2 lemons - 150g blueberries* - icing sugar for the finishing touch

Beurre noisette - Browned butter

Preparation

Note: I made little modifications to the preparation method compared to the original recipe made by Camille, based on recommendations from the patissier Lenotre.

1. Preheat the oven at 170C, fan bake.

2. In a small pot, melt the butter until it gets slightly brown, but not burned. This is what French call 'beurre noisette', browned butter in English. Filter it and rest.

3. Line the bottom of the cake tin.*

4. Whisk the egg whites with an electric beater until they get frothy, slightly firm but not stiff.

5. In a mixing bowl, mix together the flour, the icing sugar and the ground almond.

6. Add the browned butter and mix.

7. Then brisk in the egg whites until the preparation is homogeneous.

8. Add the lemon zests. Be careful to not over mix the preparation - once the zest are absorbed, stop mixing.
9. Pour the preparation in the cake tin and put the blueberries (previously coated in flour)* in one by one, so that they are all covered by the preparation.

10. Cook for 30 mins - but keep an eye as timing might slightly vary depending on your oven. If the cake top gets to brown, then cover with foil.

11. Wait few minutes before you remove the cake from the tin. Cool down on a cooling rack.
12. Sprinkle icing sugar over the cake and cut into 16  or 20 pieces.

Tips

* The recipe specified 220g of icing sugar, but I will reduce to 190-200g next time I make this cake, because we found it a bit too sweet to our taste

* I used canned blueberries, which I drained from the very beginning of the recipe and coated in flour. Coating your fruits (canned, defrosted or fresh) in flour before you put them in the cake mixture will prevent from the fruits falling at the bottom of the cake.

* It makes it easier if you rub a tiny little bit of butter at the bottom and on the edges before you line the tin. This way the baking paper will stick to the tin.

Enjoy with a cup of tea or coffee!