Categories: Desserts

Madeleines (Petite Butter Cakes)

It is easy to fell in love with those little butter cakes the first time you try them: it is exactly what happened to me :), I had to find the recipe. And then I’ve got hooked: every time I have extra 30 mins and a mood for baking – I am preparing madeleines.

Apart of eggs, butter, flour and a few other ingredients you will also need madeleine baking pan (madeleine molds) to prepare those french sponge cakes. Internet says they exist in two sizes: bigger and smaller.

I’ve spend quite some time before I finally found bigger ones in Williams-Sonoma, I was also lucky they appeared to be nonstick ones. By the way if you cook in small size molds – reduce cooking time to about 6 mins.

With ingredients described in this recipe will get you about 24 madeleines, enough for 2 baking forms with molds of bigger size. If you want more just double or triple the amounts.

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:
    Madeleines Recipe: Step 1
  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:
    Madeleines Recipe: Step 2
  3. While butter is being melted, grease baking form with butter, make sure you get all the ridges:
    Madeleines Recipe: Step 3
  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):
    Madeleines Recipe: Step 4
  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):
    Madeleines Recipe: Step 5
  6. Continue beating and slowly add sugar:
    Madeleines Recipe: Step 6
  7. Continue beating until sugar is completely dissolved:
    Madeleines Recipe: Step 7
  8. Add vanilla extract:
    Madeleines Recipe: Step 8
  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):
    Madeleines Recipe: Step 9
  10. Add zest to the mixer bowl and mix it in to the batter:
    Madeleines Recipe: Step 10
  11. Use flour sifter if you’ve got one, or sieve like me and add all flour:
    Madeleines Recipe: Step 11
  12. Turn mixer to slowest speed it has and mix flour in just until the batter is homogeneous:
    Madeleines Recipe: Step 12
  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:
    Madeleines Recipe: Step 13
  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:
    Madeleines Recipe: Step 14
  15. Fill each mold with batter for about 2/3 using a spoon:
    Madeleines Recipe: Step 15
  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!):
    Madeleines Recipe: Step 16
  17. Preheat oven on 350F and put madeleines pan(s) in:
    Madeleines Recipe: Step 17
  18. Bake for about 10-12 mins or until madeleines start getting brown edges:
    Madeleines Recipe: Step 18
  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:
    Madeleines Recipe: Step 19
  20. Then dust cakes with powdered sugar:
    Madeleines
Enjoy!

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


View Comments

  • Hi... Your recipe calls for 3.5 ounces of butter or 3/4 cup of butter. 1/2 cup butter weighs 4 ounces. Am confused. Please clarify. Thx.

    • Recipe calls for 3.5oz of which 3 oz (about 3/4 of stick, not the cup) goes into batter and rest for greasing baking molds.

      I modified recipe to make it more explanatory. Thank you for pointing this out.

  • Browsing for vanilla custard found your page "Enjoy Your Cooking". Will try tomorrow your "Simple Cake
    with Sour Cream Frosting" for our tuesday's family lunch. Yummy! I live in the Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Will let you know how it turned out.

    • You can try using other types of baking molds, if you have any. Just make sure when you put batter it isn't too deep, you may also need to correct baking time if molds you are using are bigger.