I was grateful this week's Heavenly Cake baking wasn't a complicated cake. We had interstate visitors drop in on us for the weekend, somewhat unexpectedly. We had warning a few days in advance but not much more than that. At work, I'm entering into the part of our annual cycle where deadlines start to press and every day is full of things that have to be accomplished in order to meet our long-term goal. At present, when I make it through to the weekend, I'm really craving some peace and routines and some quiet time. To add to all of that I had quite a disturbed night, with little sleep, on Friday night, as I mulled over some interpersonal conflict that had happened at work. I was not at the core of the conflict, merely a bystander but as usual I wondered were there things I could have done differently to help my colleagues avert the crisis. Anyway, long story short, I'm glad it isn't difficult to bake Peanut Butter Ingots. I certainly wasn't up to a Chocolate Raspberry Genoise that Evil Cake Lady made last week.
I had made the Plum Ingots, though it was mid-winter when I did, so I used frozen blueberries instead of plums. I hadn't really liked the consistency of those ingots. Maybe I did something wrong in that batter because the consistency was kind of rubbery.
Anyway, general kind of "unwellness" over the weekend and trepidation over the rubberyness of an almond-beurre noisette batter were banished after I whipped these up.
First of all, you make the beurre noisette (which we've done before). You melt the butter until the solids have browned. Then you toast almonds and grind them up with powdered sugar (icing sugar), then add a scant amount of plain flour. Whip the four egg whites until they are foamy, add the almond/flour mixture and the strained browned butter. Then the final touch is the peanut butter. They don't take long to cook (another bonus).
When they came out of the oven they smelt fantastic - warm and buttery, with wafts of peanuts. They were crunchy on the outside and crumbly and moist on the inside. I could make these again for a quick afternoon tea treat for the kids.
I'm sorry I didn't put a better effort into photographing them. But hey, given the life issues at present, at least I made something!