Madeleines

Day 6, Baking Week

My sister-in-law is wild about madeleines and her enthusiasm is contagious. The basic recipe is a blank canvas onto which any number of flavours can be grafted. I have half a dozen new ideas swirling in my head for different flavours and additions that I would like to try, but to be getting on with, here are some examples of what we made together last week.

This is the basic recipe and I have included some of our variations at the end of the post.

150 g flour
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
a pinch of salt

3 large eggs
100 g sugar
1 tsp vanilla
113 g butter, melted (1 stick)
*if making the plain recipe, we like to add the zest from one lemon to the butter. If you are using the basic recipe as a base for other flavours, leave the lemon out.

Grease the madeleine pans with butter. We used silicon pans due to my daughter’s nickel allergy, so they don’t strictly need to be buttered, but it makes the cakes a little bit crispier and tastier, so we did it anyway. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F.

Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt and set aside. Melt the butter.

Beat the eggs and sugar until the ribbon stage is reached.

In three batches, gently fold the flour mixture into the egg mixture. Fold in the melted butter. Fill pan indentations 3/4 full. Put into the oven and turn the oven down to 400 degrees F and bake for 6 minutes. Turn down the oven to 350 degrees F and bake for another 6 minutes or until golden brown. Remove and cool on racks.

If you would like to watch a video on madeleine-making, here is a good one by Cooking with Alia.

Here are a couple of the variations for different flavours. The possibilities are only limited by imagination!

Strawberry White Chocolate Madeleine
Use the basic recipe, but melt 1 Lindt strawberry white chocolate bar and 2 Tablespoons of strawberry jam with the butter. Fold in as you would with just the butter.

Apricot Coconut Rum Madeleine
Use the basic recipe with the following changes:
Melt 1 Lindt coconut white chocolate bar, 2 Tablespoons of rum, and 3 Tablespoons of apricot jam to the melting butter. Add 1 cup of coconut to the flour mixture before folding into the egg mixture.

Cardamom-Rosewater Madeleine
To the basic recipe, add a generous teaspoon of fresh ground cardamom to the flour (we ground the seeds from green cardamom pods). To the melted butter, add 5 tsp. of rosewater.

Lavender Madeleine
To the basic recipe, add 4 drops of culinary lavender oil to the melted butter. You can decorate it with sifted icing sugar and lavender buds if you choose.