Sweet Chestnut Financier

Sweet Chestnut Financier When I was a child, Tenshin amaguri 天津甘栗 (Tianjin sweet roasted chestnuts?) were my special favorite food. They were not available in my hometown, and the only time I could eat them was when my grandparents or parents brought some from Kochi city as a souvenir. The sweet smell of the chestnuts was so tempting, and their taste never disappointed me. I kept eating them and didn't care about my fingers getting dirty from cracking the shells. (Their shells are so sticky from the syrup added during roasting.) When reading my favorite books munching on the sweet roasted chestnuts, I was definitely the happiest child in the whole world. Most of my favorite books from childhood have brown fingerprints here and there, showing how often I had such blissful moments. ;) Good thing is that these days, they sell peeled Tianjin amaguri in retort-pouch-like package, so I don't have to worry about making a mess on my books or those checked out from the library. But today, instead of munching on them while reading, I threw some of them into food processor to make ground chestnuts. Yes, to make financiers. Using ground chestnuts in place of almond flour for making financiers was not my idea; it was in a recipe posted on a Japanese recipe site. And the result was a great success! My ground chestnuts were pretty chunky (because I didn't want to spend too much time with the food processor), but I liked them that way. The amaguri chunks -- as well as the golden-brown, caramelized edges -- gave nice accent to the lovely tea cakes. With a nice hot milk tea, the amaguri financiers cheered up my gloomy, cloudy afternoon. (Yeah, I'm still haunted by the bento anxiety, you know.) Categories: Sweets