Financiers—The Most Buttery Baby Cakes

Financiers (feeNAHNseeay) are simple little almond cakes consisting essentially of equal weights of sugar, egg whites, and beurre noisette (browned butter) and about one-quarter their combined weight of the ground almonds and flour. They often appear on the mignardises tray of tiny sweets often presented at the end of a meal at upscale restaurants and would also serve well as tea cakes.

The financier was invented in France more than a hundred years ago by the baker Lasne, whose bakery was on the Rue Saint-Denis, close to the Bourse, the financial center of Paris. The cake was said to have been named for the financiers who frequented the bakery, although the actual formula was based on the visitandine, a cake baked by nuns of the Order of the Visitation. Traditionally, financiers were baked in the shape of little gold bars. Nowadays, in America, the shapes vary widely—from bâteau to ridged rounds, thimbles, and even shells (which I find confusing because certain shapes suggest specific desserts, and when I bite into a shell-shaped cake, my taste buds reasonably expect a madeleine!). Silicone molds for baking have added immeasurably to the ease with which one can turn out hundreds of these little pastries.