Almond meal combined with other nuts in recipes

[Rajala]

I'm currently looking at a recipe for a hazelnut financier, which contains 36 gram hazelnut powder/meal. However, it also contains 107 gram of almond powder/meal. I mean, I feel like this is an almond financier, there's more almond than hazelnut here.  

 

I've seen this in recipes before, for a pistachio sponge, where there's more almond than pistachio. What is the reason that almond is used together with other nuts? I'm thinking cost, that almonds are cheaper than other nuts - but I guess that there might be other things at play as well, like that almond gives you the texture you'd like or whatever. The reason I'm asking is because I'm looking to make a pistachio financier, and since it's just for fun - I'd rather use only pistachio powder/meal, to get more taste from it.

 

Bad idea?

[Kerry Beal]

I would say you are correct, the almond flour is there to keep the costs down. This summer when I had a glut of pistachio and hazelnut flower at my disposal I made recipes using 100% of the expensive nut flour.

[teonzo]

That's pretty frequent in all French pastry when you use nuts in baked items. It's done for various reasons:
- cost (as you wrote);
- taste (heritage from the past);
- texture.
In French pastry, most of the times flavors are in the background, not in the foreground. Think about pralines (filled bonbons): if you go to a French chocolatier and taste a cinnamon praline or a lavender praline or whatever, first thing you will taste will be the chocolate, then cinnamon / lavender / whatever in the background. Things changed quite a bit in the last 20 years, mainly thanks to restaurants (where chefs want frontal flavors). But French pastry still has that philosophy: the characterizing flavor should be a nuance, not a kick. Almonds have a subtle flavor if compared to other nuts, so if you use 3/4 almonds and 1/4 pistachio / hazelnuts / walnuts you'll taste the second ones and not the almonds. If you use all almonds in that recipe then a good amount of people won't even notice they are there. There are professional recipes for pistachio biscuit joconde where the pistachio % is really minuscule.
About texture, almond is the nut that gives the "best" flour, meaning it's the easiest one to grind to flour and gives the best texture in baked goods. Pistachio flour is coarser than almond flour. You can't get fine flour from nuts with higher fat content like hazelnuts and walnuts, they will start to release oil before getting a fine flour. If you use only pistachio flour (subbing all almond flour) then you'll get a product with a more grainy texture, even worse with hazelnut and walnut "flours". If you use nut pastes then you risk to deflate the batter (ruining everything), for sure you end up with a denser texture. The main advantage of almond flour in leavened baked goods (both chemical and physical leavening) is that it gives a fluffy and fine result, if compared to other nuts.
You can sub almonds with pistachio in this recipe, you'll get a much more pronounced pistachio taste, but you will loose on texture and volume.

 

 

 

Teo

 

[Rajala]

Thanks Teo! A bit of everything is the reason then I guess. Since I'm an amateur and don't really have a reference, I'll go all in on pistachios, and see if I'm happy with the texture or not.  

 

I'm going to create a cake with multiple pistachio layers; sponge, mousse, crisp, and one fruit layer - Raspberry or cherries. Not sure which will be best, but I'll try both!

[teonzo]

I LOVE pistachio, but I think you are overdoing it: too many pistachio layers overall, the result will be heavy and cloying if pistachio goes over 1/3 of the cake.

Try pomegranate, since we are in season. Rose would be great too with pistachio and pomegranate.

 

 

 

Teo

 

[Franci]

6 hours ago, teonzo said:

About texture, almond is the nut that gives the "best" flour, meaning it's the easiest one to grind to flour and gives the best texture in baked goods. Pistachio flour is coarser than almond flour. You can't get fine flour from nuts with higher fat content like hazelnuts and walnuts, they will start to release oil before getting a fine flour. If you use only pistachio flour (subbing all almond flour) then you'll get a product with a more grainy texture, even worse with hazelnut and walnut "flours". 

 

 

Teo

 

 

Since in my business I made only nut flour cakes, I gained some experience with baking with nut flours. Especially my hazelnut cake was only hazelnut flour, sugar and egg whites, so simple, so tricky. I tried already made hazelnut flours even the expensive imported from Piemonte. One of the secrets in that cake was the hazelnut flour, the already made flours compared to mine were so much oilier giving me a denser cake. For my experience is possible to have a light, not oily hazelnut flour.  I had better success in making a light hazelnut flour than a pistachio flour. 

[Rajala]

8 hours ago, teonzo said:

I LOVE pistachio, but I think you are overdoing it: too many pistachio layers overall, the result will be heavy and cloying if pistachio goes over 1/3 of the cake.

Try pomegranate, since we are in season. Rose would be great too with pistachio and pomegranate.

 

 

 

Teo

 

 

Pistachio, pomegranate and rose - feels like we're getting a middle eastern cake here.  

 

Are you thinking rose water or incorporate rose taste in another way? Rose feels like it's super easy to over dose.

[teonzo]

9 hours ago, Franci said:

 

Since in my business I made only nut flour cakes, I gained some experience with baking with nut flours. Especially my hazelnut cake was only hazelnut flour, sugar and egg whites, so simple, so tricky. I tried already made hazelnut flours even the expensive imported from Piemonte. One of the secrets in that cake was the hazelnut flour, the already made flours compared to mine were so much oilier giving me a denser cake. For my experience is possible to have a light, not oily hazelnut flour.  I had better success in making a light hazelnut flour than a pistachio flour. 

 

Probably you had success because you used a variety with less fat content. Italian hazelnut varieties are considered the best for their high fat content. Only way I've been able to get a decent hazelnut flour was mixing whole hazelnuts with wheat flour, then running them in a refiner. Never had any success trying with only hazelnuts: refiner, Thermomix, food processor... each time they released oil before reaching a fine grain.

 

 

 

Teo

 

[teonzo]

5 hours ago, Rajala said:

 

Pistachio, pomegranate and rose - feels like we're getting a middle eastern cake here.  

 

Are you thinking rose water or incorporate rose taste in another way? Rose feels like it's super easy to over dose.

 

Definetely Middle East! That combo stood the test of time (centuries) for good reasons. Since pomegranates are in season, better going for top quality pomegranates than with frozen purees. Beware homemade pomegranate juice is a liquid, it's not thick like raspberry or cherry puree, so you need to thicken it before making the mousse, otherwise the semi-whipped cream will deflate. To thicken it you just need to add a bit of pectin and mix it, no need to heat the juice, pectin acts as a thickener even at cold temperatures. If you have xanthan gum that's good too.

 

When I use rose in pastries I go for the essential oil, you can find it in health stores. If you use the essential oil then you need to add it drop by drop literally, it's really strong. Don't put pure essential oil drops in your mouth, you risk severe health damages (you risk even dying, not a joke), always mix it with a good amount of other ingredients before tasting. Rose water is easier to dose, since it's much less concentrated. In each case proceed with caution and taste after each small addition, as you know there's the risk of the "soap effect".

 

 

 

Teo

 

[Alex]

1 hour ago, teonzo said:

Don't put pure essential oil drops in your mouth, you risk severe health damages (you risk even dying, not a joke)

 

OK, now I want to know more about this. Could you perhaps start another forum for us?

[Rajala]

You forget that I live in Sweden. Even things in season is fucking expensive here.  

 

I'm thinking how to work with pomegranates, heat the seeds up so the juice releases from them? I one tried to mix pomegranate juice with gelatin, not a good match. It turned brown.

[teonzo]

5 hours ago, Alex said:

OK, now I want to know more about this. Could you perhaps start another forum for us?

 

I don't remember the exact sources where I read these info. I started using essential oils in 2008 (I'm sure about this since it was during my stage at a chocolatier), at that time I searched for all the useful infos I could find. So I remember the infos but not where I found them.
If you put a drop of essential oil on your tongue then most probably you end up ruining the taste receptors in that zone, due to the really high concentration.
If you ingest a certain amount of drops (which depends from essential oil to essential oil, from person to person) you risk dying. It's the dose that makes the poison (there's water poisoning too), the lethal dose for essential oils is in the range of few drops.
Essential oils are a great thing in cooking, since cold distillation is the best way to extract aromas, but they must be used with extreme caution, since those risks are pretty bad.

 

 

 

Teo

 

[teonzo]

6 hours ago, Rajala said:

You forget that I live in Sweden. Even things in season is fucking expensive here.  

 

If you are willing to make a cake that's 100% pistachio then you can afford to buy pomegranates that were harvested by a virgin daughter of a virgin father and a virgin mother, price is about the same.

 

 

 

6 hours ago, Rajala said:

I'm thinking how to work with pomegranates, heat the seeds up so the juice releases from them? I one tried to mix pomegranate juice with gelatin, not a good match. It turned brown.

 

You can cut a pomegranate in half then use an orange juicer, just like you are juicing an orange instead of a pomegranate. It's the exact opposite of an elegant thing to do, but it's quick and effective (you'll curse at me when you'll reach the cleaning stage, but this is another story).

 

This is a basic recipe for a pomegranate mousse:

 

200 g    pomegranate juice
60 g    sugar
2 g    pectin NH (HM is good too)
6 g    gelatin
200 g    cream (35% fat)

 

Prepare the pomegranate juice. Mix the sugar and the pectin, to break pectin lumps. Add sugar and pectin to pomegranate juice, mix with an immersion blender until sugar and pectin are completely dissolved. Reserve in the fridge for 2-4 hours, it takes some time for the pectin to act as cold thickener. You need to get something with the texture of a thick puree, since if you add a liquid to semi-whipped cream (or to meringue, which case goes even worse) then you deflate it.
When the pomegranate "puree" is ready then heat about 50 g of it to 50°C, add the soaked gelatin sheets to diffolve it. If you use powder gelatin then you need to soak it in 30 g water in advance, then melt it together with the 50 g of the pomegranate puree. Add all this to the rest of the pomegranate puree and mix, preferably with an immersion blender to avoid lumps.
Pour the pomegranate juice into the semi-whipped cream and fold it to make the mousse as usual.

 

 

 

Teo

 

[Rajala]

29 minutes ago, teonzo said:

If you are willing to make a cake that's 100% pistachio then you can afford to buy pomegranates that were harvested by a virgin daughter of a virgin father and a virgin mother, price is about the same.

 

 

Haha, pretty much.

 

Thanks for the recipe. So it's a fruit mousse without an Italian meringue? That's a first for me, I've always used a meringue to mix with the fruit gelatin mixture before adding cream - need to try it!