Honey, Hazelnut And Brown Butter Tea Cakes With Herbed Goat Cheese

Honey, Hazelnut and Brown Butter
Tea Cakes With Herbed Goat Cheese

This recipe highlights beautiful honey and thyme planted to keep the bees happy, and incorporates goat cheese in honor of generous ruminants that have changed many people’s perceptions of goat milk, including my own. 
Ingredients:
1 cup hazelnut, almond or walnut flour
½ cup sugar
¼ cup honey
5 tablespoons all-purpose flour
Generous pinch salt 
4 large egg whites, at room temperature
½ teaspoon vanilla
2½ ounces brown butter, slightly warm (liquified)
Directions:
Preheat the oven to 375º F and, ideally using softened butter, thoroughly grease the insides of mini muffin or madeleine pans.

Combine the hazelnut flour, sugar, allpurpose flour and salt. Stir in the egg whites and vanilla, then add the browned butter and honey.

Fill each pan so that the batter almost reaches the top. Flatten the tops of the cakes by sharply rapping the pans on a counter, then bake for 13 minutes, until golden in color.

Allow the cakes to cool in the pans, then flip pans and give them a good shake to release cakes onto a plate or clean counter surface.

Tea Time Herbed Goat Cheese
This grassy, earthy cheese ball makes a great complement to sweet, nutty tea cakes, and can be rolled up in minutes.
Ingredients
Chèvre
Fresh thyme
Za’atar spice blend
Sumac
Sea salt
Honey
Edible flowers (I use white society garlic blooms)
Directions:
Roll a small handful of soft chèvre into a ball. Place fresh thyme leaves on a plate, then roll the ball over them with your palm, so the cheese picks up the leaves.

Next, drizzle the ball with honey and cover the plate with 1 to 2 tablespoons za’atar and sprinkle with a pinch of sumac. Using the same technique, coat the ball with spices. Drizzle another small amount of honey over the ball before sprinkling it with sea salt and pressing edible flowers onto the surface.