Let them eat cake.

Let's celebrate five years with a bake-along: madeleines!

Dear listeners,

Welcome to another year of The Land of Desire! As I mentioned on this week’s episode, I think we all deserve to celebrate with a little cake - and do I have the little cake for you!

A few years ago, I received a random package in the mail for something I hadn’t ordered. A madeleine pan? I hadn’t ordered a madeleine pan. “What a weird mistake,” I said. “Ah - that’s a gift from me!” said my boyfriend. “Since you like baking, I thought if I bought you a pan…you would make madeleines, and then I would get to eat them.” A cunning move, and reader, it worked. It turns out that madeleines are a very simple thing to make, once you get the basic technique down, and now my Sunday afternoon tea is a little fancier (see above). So I’m issuing a challenge: give madeleine baking a try!

---

Most French bakers will tell you that madeleines ought to have the same proportions as pound cake: equal parts flour, butter, sugar. But - someone’s going to wrap my knuckles here - I disagree. The proportions here are adapted from this Serious Eats recipe, and result in a salted caramel butteriness.

The Madeleines of Diana’s Dreams

If you’ve tried making madeleines before, you’ve probably seen a lot of finicky recipes that insist on things like room temperature eggs, gently folding the butter in, but I swear to you, it doesn’t matter. At least not to my caveman taste. (Here’s a comparison of what it looks like when you bake with cold/warm/room temperature ingredients. Reader, I cannot see a difference significant enough to make me wait another hour for cake.)

The lightbulb 💡 moment was watching an authentic French Man™ just chucking it all into a bowl, producing the most gorgeous madeleines yet. I’ve shared that with you below. As I mentioned in the episode - madeleines aren’t the product of master pastry chefs! They’re home cooking! Relax, madeleine bakers.

P.S. I love my KitchenAid stand mixer. But don’t do it - it’s easy to overwork the batter in one of those things, and it’s only a few minutes of whisking. You can do it! 💪

Equipment:

• madeleine pan - You can buy the one I have for $12 here. (That’s an affiliate link, btw, but…it really is the pan I’ve used for about three years.)

• whisk - my favorite video (see below) is insistent about using a loose balloon whisk, but I just use a random $2 whisk and they turn out beautifully

• one big bowl

• a sieve (a.k.a. one of these bad boys)

• measuring spoons

• optional: pastry brush

Ingredients:

• 100 grams (⅔ cup or 10.66 tablespoons) flour - I use all-purpose

• 4 grams (3/4 teaspoon) baking powder

• 3 grams (1/2 teaspoon) salt

• 100 grams (1/2 cup) sugar

• 15 grams (1 tablespoon) vanilla extract - this is an excuse to use The Good Vanilla

• 2 large eggs

• 20 grams (1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon) honey

• 85 grams (6 tablespoons) butter + a leetle extra to grease the pan - you’re supposed to use unsalted but I use salted! I’m a rebel!!

Instructions:

1. Watch the video linked below, starting at the 4:14 mark. Do it. Watch it all the way through, and then play it back while you make the madeleines. My ingredients are different, so don’t be confused when you see him adding lemon, etc, but the technique is what we’re copying. It is incredibly helpful to see what you’re working towards.

2. Melt the butter on the stove or in the microwave. As soon as it’s mostly melted, take it off the heat and let it cool down until it’s not too hot to touch. If you don’t have a pastry brush, hang on to the waxed paper that wraps your butter, you’ll use it to grease the pan later.

3. In your big bowl, crack the eggs and beat them with a whisk for just a second, just enough to break up the yolks. Then dump in your sugar and whisk the heck out of it for 1 minute. Don’t cheat - put a timer on.

4. Add in your honey, whisk the heck out of it for 2-3 more minutes. It should be pale in color and at least a little bit foamy. Check with the video - does it match his at the 5:14 mark? If not, keep going. Don’t cheat and stop whisking before it looks like his! I believe in you!

5. Add your vanilla, whisk the heck out of it for another 30 seconds or so.

6. Put your sieve on top of your mixing bowl. Dump the flour, baking soda and salt in the sieve, shake-shake-shake on top of your wet ingredients. It’s snowing!

7. Use the whisk to mix everything together. Don’t overmix! Look at the video at 6:10.

8. Add the butter and whisk together. Don’t rinse out your butter pot - you’re going to use the leftovers to grease your pan. This really knocked me on my derrière the first time I watched this video - everybody else was delicately folding it in with a spatula, which sucks and takes forever, but this guy just goes in with a fat whisk and stirs. A madman! But it totally works. This is the key: does your batter look like his, with the lovely ribbon thickness, at 6:37? If so, you’ve done it! Forge ahead with confidence.

9. Let the batter sit at room temperature for an hour. That’s it. If you’re making these ahead, you can absolutely let them sit in the fridge overnight, but you don’t need to. Every other recipe wants you to wait an eternity, but it doesn’t make any difference! You’re trying to let the flour hydrate and let the baking powder emulsify everything, but it doesn’t take forever for that to happen. Throw a towel over your mixing bowl, do the dishes, watch one episode of The Office, then come back after 30 minutes to prep while the batter finishes resting.

10. Here’s where I disagree with Stephane: his oven is too dang hot! Preheat your oven on to 200C/400C. This will be plenty hot enough to give you a lovely hump.

11. While the oven is preheating, grease your madeleine pan with any leftover melted butter. If you’re out of melted butter, go ahead and melt a quarter of a tablespoon more. Use either a pastry brush or the butter stick wrapper to dunk in the melted butter and reeeeally get in the nooks and crannies of the madeleine pan.

12. Once your batter has rested for an hour, spoon it into the madeleine pan. Now, I’ve never really been able to get my batter to look like the video’s at this point in the game. His is still liquid, while mine is usually a bit more like a paste. It’s all good. If yours comes out as a paste like mine does, just use a spoon to scoop a small amount into each mold, then use the back of the spoon to geeeently nudge it into the nooks and crannies. Once you’re finished, put the loaded pan in your fridge for about 5-10 minutes. This will produce a nice thermal shock, a.k.a. the little bellies!

13. Stick your pan in the oven at 200C/400F for 2-3 minutes. Watch it like a hawk! If it starts to burn before the time is up, follow your instincts and turn it down.

14. After 2-3 minutes, turn the oven down to 190C/375F. I like to waft my oven door open and closed a couple times to cool the oven down quickly.

15. Bake for another 4-5 minutes. Watch the little humps rise up! Take them out when they’re golden, but be a little brave about how long you leave them in. I always chicken out and take them out too early because I’m afraid they’ll burn.

16. Gently nudge them out of the greased pan ASAP. If you have a wire rack, let them cool on that. Make a pot of tea while they cool down. (My great love? Mariage Frères - one of my favorite local shops sells online + ships! I prefer Wedding Imperial because I’m a sucker for buttery vanilla if you haven’t noticed, but more traditional Proustian types might prefer a chamomile.)

17. Eat them right away! Madeleines have a high air content so they go stale quickly. That’s why they’re so good for home baking - it’s impossible to get one as soft and fresh in a café. However, even stale madeleines are great for dunking.

YOU DID IT. 🎉 Tell me how they turn out in the comments! Share pictures on Facebook or tag me in an Instagram picture!

P.S. Want something to read during your tea break? I put together a new list on my Bookshop site with all my favorite French food writing. Enjoy!

---

That’s all for now! Have a lovely weekend, and I’ll see you all in August, ten pounds heavier from all the madeleines I’ve been eating. Until next time, au revoir!

Bisous,

Diana