Almond Brown Butter Muffins
Inspired by traditional French Financiers!
Happy new year! 2025 was filled with so many delicious exclusive recipes. The ones that intrigued you most were My Favorite One-Bowl Zucchini Cake, Pumpkin Butterscotch Bars, and Chocolate Chip Slice & Bake Shortbread Cookies.
If you’ve followed me for any length of time, you likely know that teaching has always been a passion. My bread baking cookbook series* has taught millions of people how to bake fresh bread at home in just five minutes a day. Zoë Bakes, my TV show on HBO, features experts in my community who teach me their secrets, then I head back to my kitchen to teach them to you. My most recent cookbooks, Zoë Bakes Cakes and Zoë Bakes Cookies each feature a deep dive section on cakes and cookies respectively.
This year I want to introduce you to some techniques you may not be familiar with to help you hone your baking skills. These new techniques will get trickier as we go, but you’ll be building on them all year and by the end of 2026 you’ll have learned so much—just in time to show off your skills for holiday baking!
First up: Almond Brown Butter Muffins (Financiers) made with almond flour and toasty brown butter — These are inspired by the traditional French financiers, which are small desserts known as a Mignardises (min-yar-dees). A financier is baked in a special, shallow, rectangular pan, which creates a cake that looks like a bar of gold, hence the name! I do not own a Financier Pan* (it may be the only baking pan I do not own), so I improvised and baked them in muffin cups. The batter is made with a deep, dark, nutty, browned butter, which makes the muffins super rich and luxurious. The almond flour is both for flavor and to add even more richness and a tender crumb to the little cakes.
Brown butter is simply butter that has been cooked until the milk solids start to caramelize, adding a toasty flavor to the butter. Whenever I need to level up a recipe, I grab my container of refrigerated brown butter and try adding it to the recipe.
These little cakes are sophisticated enough to serve as a dessert, but they are also perfect for eating alongside a bowl of homemade yogurt and berries for a decadent brunch or just a Tuesday breakfast.