Philip Khoury’s recipe for hazelnut financiers

Some science is quite literally baked into this recipe. It has no added fat and is designed to use the oils naturally present in toasted hazelnuts, which lend their beautiful flavour and aroma to these little cakes. As this is a plant-based recipe, the absence of eggs means you need less fat to achieve a beautiful, tender sponge.

Hazelnut financiers

Use a traditional financier mould for a traditional presentation or simply a 12-cupcake tin; the recipe will also work with the likes of almonds and walnuts.

Prep 15 min
Cook 15 min
Serves 12

90g hazelnuts, plus 20g extra for topping
Vegan butter or spread, to grease
125g plain flour, plus extra for dusting
130g caster sugar
½ tsp baking powder
¼ tsp bicarbonate of (baking) soda
A pinch of salt
180g soy milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
1½ tsp apple cider vinegar
Demerara sugar, for sprinkling

Heat the oven to 170C (150C fan)/335F/gas 3½ and put the hazelnuts on a baking tray. Bake for 15 minutes, until golden all the way through when you cut one in half: this is important for flavour. Remove and leave to cool. Turn up the oven to 200C (180C fan)/390F/gas 6. Rub some vegan butter into your baking tin, then dust each indent with flour and tap out the excess.

Put the cooled hazelnuts in a food processor or blender, add all the other dry ingredients and blitz until fine and the mixture starts to clump (this means the oils have begun to be extracted from the nuts); if the mixture clumps before all the nuts are ground, stop and scrape down the sides of the blender .

In another bowl or a jug, measure out the milk, vanilla and vinegar, mix, then add to the nut flour and pulse until just combined.

Pour the batter into the moulds so they’re two-thirds full, then sprinkle some very coarsely chopped toasted hazelnuts and a sprinkling of demerara sugar on top. Bake on the middle shelf of the oven for 13-15 minutes, until the top of the sponge is lightly golden and springs back when pressed gently with a fingertip.

Remove and leave to cool until you can handle the tin safely. Put a tea towel on a counter and tap one side of the tin upside down to tip out the financiers. If you haven’t greased the indents enough, they might be very lightly stuck, in which case give them another firm tap.