Great British Bake Off: Brown Butter Mini Madeleines are dainty tea time treats

I’m not a neat cake decorator.

My art teacher once told me that I’d ruined a piece of paper by drawing on it. My cake decorating skills are pretty basic, which is why I wasn’t really looking forward to Patisserie Week.

Patisserie is usually a selection of dainty, pretty cakes and pastries. I’ve started to practise my piping skills but there’s no way I could create a perfectly iced cake.

Enter Madeleine.

This no-nonsense cake is super easy to rustle up. I felt like I’d hit jackpot. To make it a teeny tiny bit fancier, I baked the sponges using browned butter for a gorgeous nutty hint. I also used a canele baking mould, just to add a little variety.

I used Michel Roux Jr.’s Madeleine recipe that you can read here as a base and tweaked it to add my own twist.

Brown Butter Mini Madeleines dusted with Biscotti icing sugar

Canele dusted with Biscotti flavoured icing sugar look pretty and are a joy to eat (Ria Tesia)

Utensils

Stand mixer

Madeleine baking mould (I used a canele baking mould too)

Milk pan

Lemon zester

Ingredients

2 free-range eggs

100g/3½oz caster sugar

100g/3½oz plain flour, plus extra for dusting

1 lemon, juice and zest

¾ tsp baking powder

100g/3½oz butter, melted and cooled slightly, plus extra for greasing

100g Biscotti flavoured icing sugar

Method

• Preheat the oven to 200C/400F/Gas 6. Brush the Madeleine tray with melted butter then shake in a little flour to coat, tapping out the excess.
• Brown the butter by placing in a milk pan on low to medium heat. Stir until the butter starts to brown, this should take around 4 minutes. Set aside to cool.
• Whisk together the eggs and sugar in a stand mixer until pale and fluffy for around 3 minutes.
• Lightly whisk in the remaining ingredients (melted butter, plain flour, lemon juice, lemon zest, baking powder).
• Carefully pour mixture into the prepared Madeleine tray.
• Bake for around 9 minutes or until the mixture has risen a little in the middle and is fully cooked through. Note: if baking mini Madeleines, the sponges should take around 7 minutes.

• Dust with icing sugar if that’s your bag, I think it just adds a cute festive touch.
• These are best eaten within an hour of cooking but will keep up to 24 hours in an air-tight container.

Tips

• If a recipe calls for melted butter, make brown butter by gently heating until it browns. This will add a lovely toasty depth to the flavour profile.
• You don’t have to dust the sponges in icing sugar, feel free to leave plain.
• I used a silicone mould for baking, however to get more defined ridges when baking, metal tins are supposed to be better. I didn’t have time to buy a metal tin but I will be ordering a metal tin when I have a spare few minutes.
• Michel Roux Jr.’s recipe recommends resting the batter for 20 minutes before baking. Numerous other recipes have this stage in too. I tried the recipe without the resting period and the sponges tasted perfect.

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