It’s time for Lilacs! White Lilacs, that is. Lilac is associated with the month of April, which is associated with Venus, the goddess of fertility, love, and beauty. Appropriately, the white lilacs are in full glorious bloom here in Victoria. The “Early Flowering Lilac”  Syringa x hyacinthiflora blooms 2 weeks earlier than colored lilacs, closely followed by the Common White Lilac (Syringa vulgaris var. alba), and is considered by many to possess one of the most powerful and alluring lilac fragrances of all. How very Venusian!

I created this recipe last year for Gather Victoria Patreon. Now I know many of us can never get enough lilac-infused treats, so I thought I’d also share it here.  I’d made many lilac recipes over the years but hadn’t yet sampled the intoxicating scent of the “early flowering white lilac”. After much fussing over potential recipes, I  went with a simple tea cake in the style of financiers. These tiny cakes are made with almond flour, butter, egg whites, and confectioners’ sugar, and seemed the perfect choice to showcase lilac’s flavor. I also added some gluten-free flour in mine, which made it similar to a friand, a small almond cake closely related to the financier.

Some French bakeries still sell financiers under the name of ‘visitandine’ as they were originally made by The Order of the Visitation of Holy Mary, also known as Visitandine Nuns, in the 17th century. May, of course, is also a big month for celebrating Mary. Statues and icons of Mary are adorned with flower crowns, and each day is devoted to a flower representing her virtues. Visitandine were made in a boat-like shape, reminding me of the vulval Navettes also associated with Mary. You’ll find the recipe for rose sugar Navettes (featured in the center of the image below) at this link as well.

Visitandine were likely co-opted from far older feasts of fertility goddesses, like Venus, who were once revered in the local area. The Church absorbed their pagan practices into the worship of Mary. By the late 19th century, a baker in Paris’ financial district began baking visitandine in the shape of small rectangles to resemble bars of gold, hence the name financiers.

While financiers are traditionally baked in a rectangular mold and friands in typically oval or round molds, I went with neither. I baked mine in a small tart mold (with a removable bottom). You can also use muffin tins, but line the cups with parchment paper liners; financier batter is sticky and will cling to the bottom of the pan. My tart tins were about 4 inches in diameter, making them larger than financiers or friends, but flatter and wider than muffins, though approximately the same volume. You can make them larger or smaller, but the point is that you need to adjust cooking times according to the size of your molds or tins.

Step one in making these tea cakes is harvesting the blossoms, preferably on a warm sunny morning after the dew has dried off. Once home, you’ll remove the petals from the sepals (the green sheath encasing the flower’s bottom). Then you’ll use the process of “hot enfleurage” to infuse their fragrance into the butter. “ 

Find out more about cold enfleurage here (and a recipe for Lilac Shortbread).

However, for this recipe,  we’re going to soak our blossoms in melted butter, but NOT COOK them. “In hot enfleurage, solid fats are heated, and botanical matter is stirred into the fat. Spent botanicals are repeatedly strained from the fat and replaced with fresh material until the fat is saturated with fragrance. This method is considered the oldest known procedure for preserving plant fragrance substances”.

The result is sweet buttery little Tea Cakes, infused with the enchanting fragrance of White Lilacs, which is as close to Venusian perfection as can be. Whatever their shape, round, rectangular, oval, or vulval, they make lovely cakes for Beltane or May Day in honor of the May Queen, or the Holy Mother, both of whom were offered cake on their sacred feast days.

p.s. And yes, of course, you can substitute lilacs of all colors.

White Lilac Tea Cakes

Makes between half a dozen and a dozen, depending on the size of the tins used

     Ingredients

• 2 cups of lilac petals
• ⅔ cup gluten-free flour, sifted (or regular all-purpose – up to your preference)
• 1 ¼  cups icing sugar, sifted (and a little extra for dusting)
• ½ tsp of sea salt
• 1 ½  cups blanched almond flour
• Finely grated zest of 1 lemon
• 1 tsp of vanilla extract
• 6 egg whites
• 1 ¼ cup + 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened & cubed

     Directions

Lilac Butter

Place butter in a small saucepan over medium heat and stir occasionally until completely melted. Remove from the heat and add 1 cup of lilac petals. Stir and then allow to cool completely until the butter hardens. Gently rewarm and use a fine strainer to sieve off spent lilac blossoms. Return the strained butter to the saucepan and gently heat until completely melted.

Add one more cup of blossoms to the melted butter and remove from the heat. Again, allow it to cool completely before reheating, and use a fine sieve to remove the spent blossoms. You should be left with just over one cup of butter.

Cakes

Sift the flour and icing sugar together in a bowl, (this helps to incorporate air, resulting in a lighter cake ) then whisk in the salt, ground almonds, and lemon zest. Rewarm and melt butter.

Whip up the egg whites until stiff peaks form. Fold the whites into the dry ingredients, add vanilla extract, then lightly stir in the melted butter. It should come together into a batter.

Cover the bowl and refrigerate for at least an hour, best overnight. This resting time allows the dry ingredients to hydrate and the flavors to meld.

Spoon evenly into your prepared tin(s). Bake for 15-20 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Do not overbake, as the cakes will be dry.

Allow to cool in the tins for 15 minutes before transferring onto a wire rack to cool completely. Dust with a sprinkle of icing sugar before serving.

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