Orange blueberry friands - and Aragorn

Let’s keep on with the sweet posts, because I have a reputation to maintain. :D

On one of my rounds at IMDb, I ended up at “The Lord of the Rings - The Fellowship of the Ring” trivia and read that Stuart Townsend was Peter Jackson’s first idea for the role of Aragorn (which was a complete shock to me). Luckily Viggo *sigh* was chosen instead – talk about a perfect replacement. :D

I have some other great replacements here for you: orange zest for vanilla and blueberries for raspberries.

Orange blueberry friands

175g unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1 cup (100g) ground almonds
6 egg whites, lightly beaten
finely grated zest of 1 large orange
1 ½ cups (210g) icing sugar, sifted
½ cup (70g) all purpose flour, sifted
¾ cup blueberries, fresh or frozen – I used frozen
icing sugar, for dusting

Preheat the oven to 190°C/375°F. Butter well ten ¾-cup (180ml) capacity mini cake or muffin pans.
Place the butter, ground almonds, egg whites, orange zest, icing sugar and flour in a large bowl and stir just until combined.
Spoon the mixture into prepared pans – they should be just over ½ full. Top each friand with 4-5 blueberries. Bake for 25 minutes or until golden and a skewer inserted in the center comes out clean.
Allow to stand in pans for 5 minutes then turn out onto a cooling rack. Dust with icing sugar to serve.

Makes 10 – I made 1/3 of the recipe above, used 3-tablespoon-capacity pans and got 7 tiny friands