Lemon Madeleines Recipe

This Lemon Madeleines Recipe will teach you about Madeleine, which is a traditional small cake from the northeastern region of France and very often, can be identified by it’s distinctive shell-like shape. It is similar to eating a lighter version of a very small sponge cake.

Lemon Madeleines Recipe

Shared by Marium Hamid

Ingredients for dough:

1. Sugar – 140g (¾ cups)
2. Lemon zest from 1 regular size lemon (more if you like it to be lemony)
3. Extra large eggs (room temperature) – 3
4. Vanilla essence – 1 tsp
5. Lemon juice – 1/4 tsp (If you like it to be more lemony, you can add in up to 2 teaspoon of lemon juice)
6. All-purpose flour – 140g (scant 1 cup)
7. Baking powder – 1/4 tsp
8. Unsalted butter (room temperature) – 140g (5/8 cup)

For greasing and dusting of pan:

1. All-purpose flour – 25g (1/5 cup)
2. Unsalted butter (soften to room temperature) – 25g (1/5 cup)

Method:

• Mix sugar and lemon zest together. Set aside for 1 hour in room temperature.
• Lightly whisk all ingredients the eggs, vanilla essence and lemon juice. Set aside. Stop when you can’t see streaks of the vanilla essence.
• Sieve flour and baking powder into a separate bowl.
• Melt the butter in microwave for 30 seconds. Leave to cool at room temperature.
• Grease the pan with butter, then lightly dust the pan with flour. Tap away excess flour by inverting the pan.
• Using a hand-held electric egg beater, beat the sugar and eggs mixtures together until thick and foamy.  Stop when the mixture resemble thick melted cheese. (About 3 ~ 5 mins on high)
• Fold in the flour into the batter.
• Fold in the butter.
• Pour mixture into pan. Do not fill more than 75% of each shell.
• Bake in a 375 F/190 C oven for 15 mins to 20 mins.
• Ready when a toothpick comes out clean.

Notes:

• Cake turn out too hard – you may have over beat the batter in step 6.
• Cake turn out lumpy – the flour was not properly incorporated. You can try to sieve in the flour into the batter before folding.
• Cake turn out black on the “shell” side and uncooked on the humps – your oven may be too hot.
• You can try to bake them on 400 F/204 C for 10 mins, then lower the temperature to 350 F/176 C and bake for another 10 mins. You can leave the oven door ajar for 30s after 10 mins to reduce the temperature of the oven quickly.
• Hump does not form on the back – for extra hump, chill the batter in the refrigerator for at least an hour before use. Note the batter will be “harder” after refrigeration.