White Chocolate Nonnettes and Orange & Poppy Seed Friands

Nonnettes

Having seen Phil's We Should Cocoa entry in the Orange challenge from As Stong As Soup in December, I couldn't resist making these for my mother's birthday. Nonnettes, it seems, are little known outside of France. I searched on google for more information and alternative recipes, but Phil's was the only one I could find in English (I gave up after page 6). The name means "little nuns" and they are a speciality of Dijon in France. They are little spiced honey cakes made with marmalade and rye flour and unusually, no eggs.

To use up the rest of the orange zest (I did have a very large orange) as well as the 4 eggs whites left over from making the trifle, I also decided to make friands as I'd not made those before either. For the friands I used this recipe scaling down the quantities to 4 egg whites and adding the zest of 1/2 an orange and 2 tbsp of poppyseeds. For the nonnettes I mostly followed Phil's recipe, but did make a few changes, such as: substituting some of the honey for agave nectar as I didn't have quite enough honey, using more rye flour and less white chocolate as I was worried about the nonnettes being too sweet.

This is how I made them:

• Melted 150g honey (runny prre-biotic NZ...) in a small pan with 50 ml of agave nectar.
• Added 80g unsalted butter, 100g light brown sugar, 100 ml milk, 90 ml water and 10 ml orange liqueur (home made).
• Stirred until smooth then poured into a large mixing bowl.
• Sifted in 200g plain white flour and 100g wholemeal rye flour, 2 tsp baking powder, 1 tsp bicarb of soda and 1/2 tsp ground cardamom seeds.
• Folded this into the honey mixture.
• Grated in the zest from half a large orange.
• Stirred in 50g chopped white chocoalte (G&B)
• Left in my cold kitchen for an hour.
• Spooned into 12 silicone muffin moulds.
• Added a teaspoonful of homemade Seville marmalade on top of each one.
• Baked for 20 minutes at 180C.
• Left in the until cool

• Mixed 2 tbsp of icing sugar with a little orange juice, so it was runny, but not overly so.
• Drizzled this over the the warm cakes whilst still in their moulds.

Friands

Both of these were good, the friands were light and slightly crunchy due to the poppy seeds, but the nonnettes were my favourite and were truly delicious. The bitterness of the marmalade contrasted nicely with the sweetness of the cake and the rye gives a satisfying smoothness to the texture. The lumps of white chocolate were an added bonus.

Thank you Phil - I shall ever be grateful to you for these.

I am linking this to Baking Addict's blog for #CitrusLove.