Semifinals + Coffee & Walnut Financiers

These toasty, nutty cakes might have a fancy name, but they're easy to whip up.

Join me and fellow Great American Baking Show winner Tina Zaccardi tonight (Thursday, December 30th) at 8:00pm Eastern / 7:00pm Central for an Instagram Live! I’ll be whipping up a batch of these Coffee & Walnut Financiers as we talk about our time in The Tent and answer your baking questions.

I took a vacation from the newsletter last week because I hosted Thanksgiving! I unplugged, then made five pies, rolls, cranberry sauce, slaw, and picked up a roasted turkey from my favorite Chinese restaurant. Having the whole family at our little house brought me so much joy. I relished the beautiful chaos in the kitchen. We played games, went on walks, and of course, ate gloriously carb-heavy beige food.

Pies, rolls, and my neice's pie order.

But now, back to the Baking Show!

I have so many memories of filming my own semifinal episode. I was incredibly nervous filming that one, and ours wasn't even patisserie week! I made one of my favorite things, ice cream, for the showstopper, which calmed me down and got me hungry.

Spoiler alert: If you haven't watched the semifinals of Great British Baking Show, stop reading now!

Great British Baking Show Episode 9: The Semifinals

As with previous years, the bakers must prove their patisserie skills in the penultimate episode. Although this discipline usually pushes the boundaries of what bakers can create within the parameters of the show, this patisserie week seemed challenging but imminently doable. Creations even a regular home baker could tackle!

I've been watching the Baking Show with my collaborator/competitor/friend/confidant/neighbor Sarah. Because of Thanksgiving, we couldn't watch together this week, so she sent me her full reaction to this episode via the Notes app. I laughed out loud. We are cut from the same cloth.

Hot Takes

• I missed Allison so much! It's never the same with just one host, and Allison's electric energy gives this show new life. I enjoy Noel, but just him plus the pressure of the semifinals made this episode feel much more tense and a bit less joyful than the rest of the season.

• What an even heat! These four bakers have all been star baker, most of them twice.

• You don't need to make full puff pastry to make millefoglie or mille-feuille. Because you're smashing the pastry down to keep it from puffing up too much, rough puff (or my flaky pastry/pie dough recipe) works just fine. If they asked the bakers to make full puff pastry, they should have requested a recipe that showcased the pastry's full puffiness.

Favorite Bakes

• Dan's financiers with pistachio, pink pepper, matcha, and some yuzu gel sounded very fascinating and complex. Dan continues to push flavors in unexpected directions. Bravo.

• The Tarte Aux Pommes technical bake looked delicious! Frangipane + apples is such an underrated combination. And I appreciate any excuse to pop a bottle of Calvados.

• Josh's lemon, blackberry, and blackcurrant millefoglie looked perfect. Classic, but elevated. I could tell that the pastry was perfectly baked. (The only perfectly-baked pastry, I might add.) We need more blackcurrant in bakes here in the States.

For Heaven's Sake

• Bake your pastry! With the exception of Josh, the bakers in the technical and the showstopper did not bake their pastry enough. This is a common mistake with home bakers, too. You want your pastry to be brown. Not pale light beige—brown. Always err on the side of over-baking (but not burning) pastry.

• Smaller is better: When it comes to the signature, and even the showstopper sometimes, the bakers need to size things down when possible. Matty's massive financiers were way too big for something that's traditionally a small, thin cake.

• Tasha's inverse puff pastry seemed like an unnecessary complication, but it didn't really matter in the end. I thought her pastry was well baked. She simply didn't have enough time to trim it like Josh did. I don't really understand why someone would make inverse puff pastry, but I bet an expert can correct me.

With such a charming cast, it hurts to see anyone leave. But all four of the semifinalists have been strong, consistent bakers. Lots of people have talked about how they were rooting for Tasha to win or that they had such high expectations of her. I don't want to dwell on that. Like she said, she's already proved that she's an incredible baker. I hope she left the tent so proud of what she's done. The world got to see her skill and her personality. We'll miss her in the tent, but I'm sure she'll be back...

tasha_f_stones

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Oh, and we'll miss Daryl! I'm so glad that they showed him during the show, and didn't try to cut him out of shots.

On to the recipe!

I knew exactly what I wanted to make this week. Coffee & Walnut Cake is a classic British cake that isn’t as common here. When talking with Paul Hollywood on the set of the Great American Baking Show, it became clear that the term “coffee cake” in the UK means coffee-flavored cake, whereas in the States, “coffee cake” is a cake you eat with coffee or at breakfast. Our coffee cake can be practically any flavor. I digress…

British Coffee & Walnut Cake consists of a simple butter cake with some strong coffee and/or ground coffee added for flavor and chopped walnuts folded through the batter. The cake is typically filled with a coffee-flavored buttercream and topped with walnut halves. I really enjoy this cake because somehow the flavors of coffee and walnut combine to taste much more exciting than it sounds. Since financiers are a nut-based bake it made sense to take those classic flavors and shove them into these buttery mini cakes.

After testing this recipe, I stood over the rack of cooling financiers and shoved them into my mouth. The sure sign of a good bake.

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Coffee & Walnut Financiers

At their heart, financiers are simple, stir-together mini cakes. Cakelettes if you will. Since these cakes are so simple to make, this version provides a lesson on adding flavor through toasting the nuts and the butter. The result: a harmonious little treat that becomes more than a sum of its parts. They're toasty, nutty, almost caramelized, with a mellow coffee flavor.

Whenever baking with nuts, toast them. Raw nuts have almost no flavor compared with toasted nuts. A couple weeks back, I judged a pie contest. The pies made with toasted nuts tasted so much better, richer, and more complex than those made with raw nuts. In these financiers, the toasted walnuts are the main ingredient, so you must toast the nuts, and toast them well. But you don’t just toast the nuts. Most financier recipes begin with browning butter to a dark toasty color. Just like with the nuts, you know it's ready by the smell.

Even if you don't think you like coffee-flavored things, give this a taste. The coffee works in concert with the other flavors and provides a rich, subtle bass note. Use a medium to light-roast coffee if you have it—those give less bitterness than a dark roast.

Tip: Freezing egg whites.

I make a lot of custard, ice cream, curd, and pastry cream, so I always have leftover egg whites. Egg white omelets are boring and rubbery, so I simply take any unused egg whites and freeze them in a plastic bag. I thaw them in the refrigerator before I need them. Financiers are a perfect easy bake to use up these extra egg whites. (Note: You cannot freeze egg yolks as easily.)

Adapted from David Lebovitz

• 150 g walnuts (about 1 1/2 cups of walnut halves and pieces)

• 113 g (1/2 cup) unsalted butter, plus about 1 Tablespoon softened butter for greasing the tin

• 1 Tablespoon very finely ground coffee

• 60 g (1/2 cup) all-purpose flour

• 150 g (3/4 cup) sugar

• 1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt

• 4 large egg whites (120 g), at room temperature

• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Heat the oven to 350F with a rack in the middle. Put the nuts on a rimmed baking sheet. Toast them for 14-16 minutes, until them smell deeply nutty. Start checking on the nuts at 8 minutes and keep a close eye on them so they don't burn. If they smell really toasty, check on them and take them out. We want them very toasted, but not burnt. Let the nuts cool completely. (Otherwise, the nuts will get pasty when you try to grind them).

Put the butter in a small saucepan over medium heat. Use a light-colored or metal pan. If you use a dark-colored pan, you won't be able to tell when the butter has browned. The butter will melt, then bubble. Once the bubbles subside a bit and the butter gets quiet (yes, listen), turn the heat to low and stir with a heatproof spatula, being sure to scrape the bottom. Cook for another 1-2 minutes, but rely on your senses. You want deeply golden brown, but not burnt, little bits on the bottom of the pan. You may have to scoot away bubbles to see down in the bottom. It will smell toasty and nutty. Turn off the heat, add the ground coffee, and stir to combine. Immediately pour the hot butter (and all of the coffee and brown bits) into another bowl. Let the brown butter cool a bit, but you want it to still be liquid.

Now heat the oven to 375F with a rack in the middle of the oven. Grease the inside of a mini-muffin tin with softened butter. 

Add the cooled, toasted walnuts to the bowl of a food processor fit with a blade, along with the flour, sugar, and salt. Pulse about 8-12 times until the walnuts are ground finely and the mixture looks like coarse damp sand. (It’s fine to have a few small nubby bits in there.) Err on the side of under-processing it: If you go too far the nuts will turn into nut butter. We don’t want that.

Dump the nut mixture into a mixing bowl. Add the egg whites and vanilla extract. Stir with a wooden spoon until the mixture is smooth and uniform. Add the browned butter and coffee mixture, scraping all of the brown bits into the batter. Stir to combine until you have a uniform, cohesive batter.

Transfer the batter to a piping bag, or just use a spoon. Evenly fill a 24-cavity mini-muffin tin with batter, then tap it on your counter a few times to settle the batter. (You can use other molds like madeleine pans or regular muffin pans, but the baking time will be different. Luckily, these are pretty forgiving little cakes and the ground nuts keep them from drying out if you over bake them.)

Bake at 375F for 15-17 minutes, until the financiers are firm to the touch. Let them cool in the tin for five minutes, then remove them from the tin and cool on a wire rack. When they're fully cool, enjoy!

Enjoy these within about 3 days. They’re best fresh, but keep very well in an airtight container.

Happy Baking,
Martin

PS: The next newsletter might be a bit delayed, but it will come! It’s the finale!