Hazelnut-almond financiers redux

I am a micromanager at the best of times and one of the ways that manifests itself is my obsessive checking of my blog stats. I can't help but wonder - who keeps misspelling my surname as Nercessian to come to this blog? And who are the readers in Afghanistan? Also, are financiers molds really that hard to find that so many people find my blog by Googling those keywords? (Please, for the love of all things chocolate, reveal yourselves!)

In fact, they are hard to find and I bought my silicone financiers molds at eBay from a purveyor in New York City. And after many, many, many months I used them.

Many moons ago I used the recipe from Clotilde Dusoulier's book to make financiers and blogged about it. I followed the recipe almost exactly last time, and they were delicious and impossibly moist, but I couldn't help but think they would be that much better if I made them in their correct molds. After all, financier means banker in English, and they are meant to resemble gold ingots. The molds I purchased made these gold-bar resembling confections about one-and-a-half times the width of my thumb. (And I have strangely small fingers).

Substitutions: This time around, I discovered I didn't have enough ground almonds so I used the hazelnuts I had ground for another recipe. You know how I feel about hazelnuts, I can't get enough. Last time I used egg whites, this time I used whole eggs. This time, I didn't grind the nuts with the sugar, I simply mixed already-ground nuts with the sugar. And I also had sea salt on hand this time.

Would I make these again? Yes, but I may just stick to the almonds next time. You can buy them already ground and that makes for a finer texture.  I might also just use egg whites to make these treats even lighter in texture. One thing is for sure, I will never go back to using mini-muffin tins.

These financiers came out of the oven with a slightly caramelized exterior that gave way to a moist, dense interior and they were simply delightful served alongside espresso. (Even days later, they are as fresh as when they first came out of the oven).

Grade: Five stars out of five. Last time around I didn't realize you can buy the almonds already ground. And these silicone molds make it easy peasy to pop these babies out. Just don't do what I did and turn them upside down on the cooling rack before realizing my mistake and burning my fingertips. They are so delicate you might leave marks.