Easiest & Quickest Almond Poundcake Muffins
Have you ever made a poundcake? It’s one of the easiest, if not THE easiest cake I can imagine (but I mean the real poundcake, not the complicated dozen-ingredient fake recipe you’ll never learn by heart!). The recipe can be resumed in one sentence: you weigh any amount of eggs and then weigh the equal amounts of the remaining – typical “cakey” – ingredients (see my lemon version recipe here). Poundcake is very popular in France (quatre-quarts), as well as financiers (check the fail-free recipe I use), which are a bit more time-consuming (though still easy even for a bad baker like me). Since I often bake them for my husband, I’ve decided to create a fusion of both, making sure it’s easy, quick and rich in almonds my husband loves.
The muffins you see above are in my opinion impossible to fail (unless you forget you have something baking in your oven…). I’ve already made them dozens of times (sometimes also as a whole cake) and I’ve never had a single problem. In short, if you only have ten minutes before baking and if you like almonds, this recipe is for you!
TIPS: We don’t like traditional sickly sweet cakes, so sugar is the only ingredients I cut down. I usually add 70% of the required amount.
As mentioned above, you can prepare a whole cake with these ingredients, but it will bake a bit longer (30-40 minutes depending on your oven).
You can replace half of the melted butter with neutral-tasting oil. I often do it because I like the moisture it adds.
If you want, you can add some baking powder, but it’s not necessary (1/2 teaspoon is what you need).
The almonds must be really finely ground. They’re usually called powdered almonds or almond flour or simply “finely ground almonds”.
I sometimes add unsalted pistachios (the dark spots at the above photograph) since they go perfectly with almonds. Unsalted pistachios might be difficult to find and/or expensive in certain countries. I advise either buying them on internet (but make sure the shoppers’ comments are positive and real!) or look for them in special shops for professionals. I buy mine at both sources and they are much less expensive than in normal supermarkets.
Preparation: 10 minutes + 15-20 min baking (depends on your oven)
Ingredients (makes 9 muffins):
2 big eggs
finely ground (powdered) almonds (it’s also called “almond flour)+wheat flour (weight ratio: approx. 9:1)
sugar
melted butter (or 1/2 butter, 1/2 oil)
pinch of salt
(two small handfuls of unsalted pistachios)
Preheat the oven to 180°C.
Weigh the eggs. Break them into a bowl and add the equal weight of all the other ingredients (apart from the salt and pistachios of course).
Mix well all the ingredients with a spoon, divide into the muffin forms (or into a cake tin, but you will have to stretch the baking time up to 30 or 40 minutes) and bake until golden.
Love pound cake … simple but delicious.
Thank you.
Really interesting; I know nothing about pound cake but, like your husband, I do very much like almond richness. I bought a food scale a while back and am trying to weigh most of my food ingredients now for the blog (so I can deliver at least some of them in the more sensible gram formulation which I have been historically horrible at doing) – all to say, it will be possible for me to weigh out the ingredients and try this! My husband and I both like warming breads/muffins that are not full of junk; I think we’d really enjoy these, thanks Sissi ♥
Pound cake is popular in UK and very popular in France (and maybe in some other countries, but for example I’ve never heard about it in Poland). It’s so simple to prepare simply making sure every basic ingredient weighs as much as eggs! Of course people cut down on sugar, add some chocolate, cocoa, fruits, etc. but the basic method is the same and always works and since everyone has scales, it can be done by a child as soon as it reads numbers. Recently I’ve been seeing some US “poundcake” recipes which are horribly complicated because based on cups which in theory should make things easier, but in this case not only do they complicate horribly everything, but the name suddenly has no sense! And people probably have no idea where this name comes from. A cake with equal volumes, this would be a great idea (I wonder if it would work…). I had no idea Canadians didn’t use scales in the kitchen either!
haha, I wouldn’t want my own ineptitude to be generalized to Canadians – I think most use the metric system but I’m really old (haha) and had already adopted the Imperial system and find it hard to let go of. Thanks for the info Sissi!
I know my husband would enjoy your muffins as pound cake is one of his favorites.
Thank you, Karen. I hope he’d enjoy this almond version.
This is so funny to me because I never knew anyone outside of France knew about quatre quarts! I just did a post on it, because with my French mother I grew up with it. Almond is such a fabulous flavoring for your muffins. I’m actually not fond of pound cake or scones… they’re much too dry for me, which is why I actually prefer beating the egg whites and folding them into the quatre quarts batter. It’s a bit lighter that way. But I was lazy, not being much of a baker! Great recipe!
Thank you, Mimi. I wouldn’t be surprised if every person who speaks and reads French, and is interested in French cuisine (especially baking) knew about quatre quarts. It’s very popular, I think every home baker knows it. I don’t know why but when I make the most traditional pound cake it’s never dry, as you say. I’d even say it’s rather fatty… Maybe the butter is different? Anyway, I often replace half of the butter with oil because it makes the cake even softer and moister. (Though I’m not a fan of cakes in general, I bake for my husband and guests, apart from rare exceptions).
Pound cake are always great and this recipe is particularly easy to make. My kids would love these muffins.
Thanks a lot, Adina. Poundcake making system is such a clever idea, isn’t it?
Love no-fail recipes! However,i’ve never made a cake of any kind using weights instead of cups and such. Sounds like a challenge to me. Thank you for saying that a cake could be made instead of muffins because I don’t make muffins, but I have turn many muffin recipes into cakes. We both love almond and pistachio so the flavors in these muffins are a huge sale. Great recipe Sissi. Thanks for sharing.
Thank you so much, MJ. I often change cake recipes into muffins (or other mini-cakes) depending on my mood, the only thing to remember is shorter or longer baking time, but it always works (even in my old oven!). This recipe is no-fail as long as the almonds are really finely ground (almost powdered). Otherwise such a small amount of wheat flour will give greasy results.
This is really a go to recipe when you need breakfast quickly; there is nothing as lovely as home made muffins hot out of the oven.
Thank you so much, Eva.