Light and fluffy madeleines

Now I’ve always wanted to cook these, mainly because it gave me an excuse to buy another couple of tins. Anything that allows me to add to my cake tin addiction can never be a bad thing right?! You don’t have to use the moulds, as you’ll see towards the end of the recipe, however the are so beautiful why wouldn’t you want to?

This is another Martha Collinson inspired bake from her Twist book. I’ve got a couple more recipes to try of hers, but this one makes 12 light and fluffy madeleines, though I doubled up the mixture to make 24 as 12 seemed quite a small number for Sarah to take into work with her.

INGREDIENTS

• 100g caster sugar
• 2 eggs
• 100g plain flour
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp vanilla bean paste
• 100g melted butter, plus extra for greasing the moulds

The method

Put the sugar and eggs into a stand mixer, for this recipe I used a new whisk that is from Kenwood.  The standing whisk wasn’t particularly expensive, but the thing that sets it apart for me is the durability of the whisks themselves and ability to break stuff down. Whisk at high speed for about 6-7 minutes, until you can lift the whisk out of the bowl and it leaves a trail that takes 2-3 seconds to disappear.

Combine the flour and baking powder in a small bowl, then sift over the egg mixture. Sifting is important so it gets rid of any lumps and makes sure it is evenly distributed. Once you’ve added the dry ingredients, you need to fold them in gently to ensure you keep the mixture light and fluffy, but also making sure the flour and baking powder mix are well incorporated (I always use a spatula to do this).

The next step is to melt the butter slowly in a small pan and once done add in the vanilla. You then want to add in the mixture a little bit at a time into the batter and stir gently to combine.

Once finished you’ll have a very runny mixture, which you should put in the fridge to chill for about 30 minutes.

While you’re waiting, you can grease up the madeleine tin with some butter. Make sure you get into every nook and cranny of the tin, otherwise you might get some that stick. I personally use a bit of well buttered kitchen roll and spread liberally! 

Martha calls for the tin to be put in the freezer, which I totally missed the first time. I’m not sure it changed anything the second time, but it didn’t hurt either, so totally your call.

Pre-heat the oven to 200C / 180C fan and once the 30 minutes has passed you’re then ready to fill each of your moulds. To make it a less messy affair, I don’t tend to use teaspoons these days, my preference is to take the batter and spoon into a piping bag. You then want to put in about a teaspoon into each mould being careful not to overfill them as they rise when they get into the oven. If you run out of moulds (like I did) don’t worry, just pop the remaining mixture into other tins – I chose cupcake moulds to do something different later.

Once the madeleines are ready, you want to leave them to cool completely before you then decide on toppings. There are plenty of toppings you can choose, the classic recipe calls for a thin icing glaze, which combines 125g of icing sugar with 2tbsps of milk and a teaspoon of vanilla bean paste. However, I went for melted milk chocolate covered in hundreds and thousands!

For the mixture that I had left over and dropped into cupcake moulds I went with dipping them in chocolate and sprinkling them with broken up freeze dried strawberries.  I think they look amazing personally, but I’m bias!

Whatever you end up trying, would love to hear how you get on.