30’ preparation, 15’ baking, 1 h cooling down.

Ingredients

• 65 g soft butter (room temperature) (2.30 oz)
• 75 g icing sugar (2.6 oz)
• 75 g almond meal
• 1 egg
• 7 g corn flour
• 2 tsp rum
• 4 tsp almond essence

Preparation

Place the almond meal in a saucepan, and heat it dry to a brown.   The finest grains will get a tan quicker, stop before the larger grains burn. Bear in mind that the colour of the almond meal will be your final cream’s, look at the picture to have an idea of the tan. Remove from the heat, and pour them in a bowl.   Add the icing sugar and mix well.

Add the soft butter in small bits, and mix slowly pressing gently on the butter to make a consistent cream (see left picture); add the egg briefly beaten, the courn flour, the rum and 3/4th of the almond essence.   Mix well.
Allow the cream to cool down a bit, and place it in a waterproof food box, to keep the flavour inside. Place in fridge until used (note: this cream can be kept for days).

Utilisation

Frangipane cream is often used in a 3:1 blend with vanilla custard.
It typically fills puff pastry to form a King Cake
Prepare a vanilla custard if necessary.  Weight the frangipane, and mix with the same weight of vanilla custard.   Then add the remaining 1/4th of the almond essence to strengthen the almond flavour.
Note: if the frangipane is for puff or croissant pastry filling, allow it to cool sufficiently otherwise it may tear off the pastry.
Baking the filled pastry will bake the frangipane completely.