Lemon and butter.. Lemon, and, butter.. LEMON AND BUTTER! Perfect combination for a little cake!

 

I ate so many of those little sweet cakes when I was living in Paris that I got somewhat addicted to them. They are small and extremely delicious, which makes them easily consumed in a bite or two. And they are easily found anywhere, you don’t have to go to a nice patisserie to find them — easily found and cheap.

 

 
So when the time came finally for a summer picnic in Helsinki, I had to bake “madeleine”. Of course in the background was playing Jacques Brel’s “Madeleine”:

 

Ce soir j´attends Madeleine,
J´ai apporté du lilas
J´en apporte toutes les s´maines
Madeleine elle aime bien ça, lalalaaaaa..

 

 
Traditionally, madeleines are baked in a shell-shaped mould, which I also have in my kitchen. But this time I wanted to try them as tiny little muffins so I used my small muffin mould. I hope my French friends would forgive me for this “brave” move.

 

You can also dip these into chocolate, put nuts or berries in them; for instance, Rachel Khoo puts a raspberry in each madeleine and squeezes some lemon curd inside. The batter I used in this recipe is an adaptation of Khoo’s madeleines.

 

Bake them for your summer picnic and make your friends happy!!

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Ingredients:

 

(makes 20 mini muffin shaped madeleines)

200 gr. butter
3 eggs
130 gr. / 3/4 cup / 1.8 dl sugar
200 gr. / 3.5 dl flour
1.5 tsp / 7.5 ml  baking powder
Zest of 1 lemon
20 gr. honey
4 tbsp / 60 ml milk

 

Soundtrack: Jacques Brel – Madeleine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRCBpMmhrgg

 

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1. Melt butter in a saucepan and let it cool.

 

 

 
2. In a mixing bowl, put eggs and sugar and mix them in medium speed until it gets pale as in the picture. If you do not have a mixer, you can whisk by hand.

 

 

 

 
3. Add baking powder and lemon zest to flour and whisk a little by hand.

 

 

 

 
4. To the melted and cooled butter, add honey and milk and whisk until they are incorporated.

 

 

 

 
5. While mixer is working, add butter mixture to egg/sugar. IMPORTANT: Since butter is still warm a bit, you have to constantly mix the egg/sugar while adding butter. Otherwise the warm butter will cook the eggs.

 

 
6. Transfer wet mixture to a clean bowl (or you can continue in the same bowl, it’s up to you).

 

 
7. Add dry ingredients in two batches and after each batch, gently fold it to wet ingredients, until no flour pocket remains.

 

 

 

 

 
8. Cover your cake batter with stretch film and put in the fridge to chill for 30 minutes.

 

 
9. Preheat the oven to 190C.

 

10. Prepare your mould: butter and flour it. Take out cake batter from fridge and put some in the mould. Do not fill all the mould, leave just a bit space from top, since cakes will get bigger!

 

 

 
11. Bake for 5 minutes, then turn off the oven for 1 minute, finally turn it on again to 160C and bake until they are completely baked. You can stick a small toothpick and see if they come out clean to test if they are baked or not. Repeat this again for the next batches of baking.