Madeleines have always been one of my favorite cookies. It is like eating tiny cakes, even the batter is similar to a sponge cake batter! These sea shell cookies are the perfect sized treat. Plus, if you want to make them a little fancier, you can always dip them half in chocolate or add some lemon zest. Madeleines are very versatile cookies. I have taken them to meetings at work and eaten them at bridal showers.
Kortni’s Kitchen: Madeleines
Recipe: Martha Stewart
Ingredients:
- 2 cups all purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- coarse salt
- 6 large eggs, room temperature
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 2 TBS packed light brown sugar
- 2 sticks unsalted butter, melted, plus more, softened, for pans
- 1 TBS plus 1 tsp honey
- 3/4 tsp pure vanilla extract
- confectioners’ sugar, for dusting
Directions:
1. Whisk together flour, baking powder, and 3/4 teaspoon salt in a medium bowl.
2. Whisk together eggs and granulated and brown sugars with a mixer on high speed until pale and fluffy, about 10 minutes. Sift flour mixture over top in 2 additions, folding in after each addition. Fold in melted butter in 2 additions, then honey and vanilla. Refrigerate, covered, for at least 2 hours.
- When you whisk the eggs, you have to be patient. I literally turned on my mixer and walked away for ten minutes so I wouldn’t stop it too soon.
- I refrigerated this batter for two hours, but I have made it before and only refrigerated it for 30 minutes. Really you just want to make sure the batter is cold.
Kortni’s Kitchen: Madeleines
3.Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Let batter stand at room temperature for 10 minutes.
- I have a large pan, but I only have one which is fine. It just took a little longer to get through all the batter. If you do have two pans, make sure you cook them on the same rack. This is so the heat hits them at the same level.
4. Generously butter 2 standard-size or 2 mini nonstick or aluminum Madeleine pans using a pastry brush.
- I didn’t have enough butter to brush the pan, so I used non-stick spray. Either way works fine as long as you cover the whole pan.
Kortni’s Kitchen: Madeleines
5. Transfer batter to a pastry bag, and snip the tip to create a 1/2-inch opening. Pipe some batter into molds, filling each about three-quarters full. Bake on middle rack until pale gold, 8 to 11 minutes (6 to 8 minutes for mini Madeleines). Immediately shake Madeleines out. Wash and re-butter molds. Repeat with remaining batter. Dust baked Madeleines with confectioners’ sugar.
- I’m a big fan of not having to do dishes. My pastry is not disposable, so instead of getting it dirty I just took a soup spoon and spooned the batter into the pan.
- Make sure that when you put them on the rack to cool you don’t stack them. The cookies are soft, so they will stick together if they are still hot. Once they are fully cooled stacking is fine.
- I did not wash every time I put new batter in the tin. I just re-sprayed every time.
- As you can see from the bottom picture, I left some in a little longer than others. If you want them to taste like cake and not have a crisp top, make sure to pull them out a little sooner. The darker the cookie, the crispier it will be. I have never had a burnt one. Even the darkest ones had just a nice crunch to add texture to the softness of the cookie.
Kortni’s Kitchen: Madeleines
One of my favorite parts about these cookies is unlike chocolate chip where the batch makes a dozen, Madeleines make about 35 per batch. This is nice because you don’t have to make multiple batches in order to serve them to a group of people. I took these cookies to work, and before the day was over the cookies were gone.
*
