Honey & Vanilla Madeleines
Madeleines are a delicious miniature cake, prepared in a madeleine pan to give the traditional scalloped edge and golden brown crumb. This recipe has been adapted from Will Torrent's book Patisserie at Home. This recipe requires you to make a beurre noisette, if you don't feel confident doing this, you can just melt the butter. The beurre noisette does help give the madeleines their classical caramel colour and nutty taste. The batter also needs to be left in the fridge overnight, which helps them keep their shape when baking.
Ingredients
- 125 g Unsalted Butter
- 100 g Icing Sugar
- 40 g Ground Almonds
- 40 g Plain Flour
- Pinch of Salt
- 3 Egg Whites approx 90g
- 2 Tsp Honey
- 1 Tsp Vanilla Extract
- Icing sugar for dusting optional
Instructions
- Place the butter in a saucepan over a medium heat and let it melt. Get a bowl ready and stand it on a heatproof service (a trivet or towel), you will pour the butter into this bowl to stop it cooking further.
- Cook the butter until it turns golden. It will bubble up, so you need a spatula or spoon to scrape the bubbles back so you can see the colour. The butter will also start to smell nutty.
- As soon as the butter starts to colour pour it straight into the bowl to stop it cooking.
- Allow to cool completely.
- Sift the sugar, almonds, flour and salt into a bowl.
- Whisk in the egg whites, honey and vanilla extract until combined.
- Finally add the cooled beurre noisette and whisk until it is fully mixed in.
- The mixture can then be placed in the fridge overnight or for at least 8-10 hours. This helps the mixture thicken to the right consistency for baking.
- Just before baking pre-heat the oven to 170 degrees (325 degrees F), Gas 3.
- Take the madeleine pan and rub butter into the scalloped moulds, then dust the tray with flour. Tap off the excess flour and then fill each mould with a heaped teaspoon of batter.
- You may find you have batter left over, do not over fill the moulds, you can use this batter to make more madeleines after your first batch.
- Bake the madeleines in the pre-heated oven for 12-15mins, you may need to rotate the pan half-way through baking to ensure they cook evenly.
- Allow to cool slightly and then remove the madeleines from the pan, dust them with icing sugar if you wish, or have them plain.