Madeleines (Petite Butter Cakes)

Ingredients:

• 3.5 oz of unsalted butter (3oz for batter + 0.5oz to grease backing molds)
• 1/2 cup of all purpose flour
• 1/3 cup of sugar
• 2 eggs
• Lemon for zest (or dried or frozen zest of ½ of lemon)
• ½ teaspoon of vanilla extract (can be substituted with the same amount of vanilla sugar)
• ½ teaspoon of salt

How to prepare, step-by-step:

1. Prepare ingredients: as I wrote vanilla extract can be substituted by the same amount of vanilla sugar, as well as you can use frozen or dried lemon zest instead of the fresh grated one. You will also need madeleine pan (which was a bit of a hassle for me to find). If you only have one form you will need to bake twice:

   

2. First you need to melt butter and let it cool till the room temperature. By doing butter first you will save some time. So, take 2 cooking pots: one slightly smaller than another, fill bigger pot with water and bring it to boil. Put butter (3oz of it) to smaller pot and place it inside of the bigger one, so it is about 1” deep into the water:

   

3. While butter is being melted, grease baking form with butter, make sure you get all the ridges:

   

4. When all butter is melted, take the cooking pot with it out of the water and set it aside – butter should cool down to room temperature before it can be added to the batter (by the way, you don’t need the other pot as well, so don’t forget to turn the heat under it off):

   

5. Add eggs and salt to the mixer bowl and beat them together on high speed with wire attachment until eggs get doubled in a volume (for approximately 3 mins):

   

6. Continue beating and slowly add sugar:

   

7. Continue beating until sugar is completely dissolved:

   

8. Add vanilla extract:

   

9. If you are choose to grate zest form the fresh lemon, wash lemon thoroughly, sometimes lemons you are buying in the stores are covered with wax to keep them from drying. So make sure you get the wax removed before removing zest from it. Then grate zest from ½ of the lemon (make sure you only get the yellow part of the skin):

   

10. Add zest to the mixer bowl and mix it in to the batter:

    

11. Use flour sifter if you’ve got one, or sieve like me and add all flour:

    

12. Turn mixer to slowest speed it has and mix flour in just until the batter is homogeneous:

    

13. Now it is time to add melted butter, but make sure it is already cooled till room temperature or wait until it is and then add it to the batter:

    

14. Gently stir butter in with a spoon or mix it with wire attachment on slowest speed your mixer has got. Stir until you can’t see any sign of butter, but not to long just until the mix is homogeneous:

    

15. Fill each mold with batter for about 2/3 using a spoon:

    

16. Repeat for all molds. The batter you’ve got should be enough for 2 baking forms, if you got 2 – fill them both. If you have only one form, you will need to bake second portion after first one is ready (repeat step 15 – 19, don’t forget to clean molds and grease them with butter again!):

    

17. Preheat oven on 350F and put madeleines pan(s) in:

    

18. Bake for about 10-12 mins or until madeleines start getting brown edges:

    

19. Get madeleines out of molds immediately (turn the baking pan upside down and shake it over the paper towel on the table) and cool on the racks:

    

20. Then dust cakes with powdered sugar:

    

I’ve used the KitchenAid stand mixer to prepare batter for this recipe and madeleine non-sticking pans for baking.