A perfect summer combination of peaches and raspberries baked into delicious little tea cakes.

Friands are dainty little, oval cakes that are moist but deliciously light and chewy. There are endless variations but all are easy and quick to make. As you need 6 egg whites, I use Two Chicks refrigerated liquid egg whites available in the supermarket. This saves on finding something to do with all the yolks if you use whole eggs.

These are made in a specially shaped friand pan, but could easily be baked in large muffin pan if you don’t have one. You would just need to increase the baking time by around 5 minutes.

Ingredients:
6 egg whites or 250ml refrigerated liquid egg whites – I use Two Chicks
250g icing/powdered sugar
125g ground almonds
100g plain flour
Zest of 1 small lemon
180g melted butter
1-2 fresh, sweet peaches, skinned and sliced fairly thinly
24 fresh raspberries
A little extra melted butter for brushing the friand pan with

Method:
Brush the friand tin with melted butter and pre-heat the oven to 180°C

Briefly whisk the egg whites until broken down and a little frothy, there is no need to whip them.

Add the zest, butter, icing sugar and fold in the flour until just combined

Spoon the mixture into the prepared tin and add a slice of peach and a couple of raspberries to each one.

Bake for 25-30 minutes, until they have risen, turned golden brown and a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.

Leave to rest for at least 10 minutes before gently turning out. I learned the hard way that if you turn out straight away, the tops will come out, leaving the bases behind in the tin – disaster!

Dust with a little sieved icing sugar to serve

Served warm, these make a perfect accompaniment with coffee or for afternoon tea, but also good in a lunchbox, picnic food, or a tasty afterschool snack.

These are supposed to freeze very well if you wrap them carefully in plastic, but they get eaten too quickly in my house to make it to the freezer!