It seems extra wonderful that I could make my madeleines on a wonderfully depressing white snowy day. Beautiful fluffy stuff everywhere outside, and some yummy puffy stuff inside!
I used a traditional French recipe, from a baker's website, and didn't really modify it at all as I was a little worried things wouldn't turn out. The French recipe make a more genoise style of cake, and in comparing it to more modern American style recipes I noticed that it used baking powder and flour to give the rising power and volume of batter rather than beaten eggs doing both jobs. Interesting. In an effort to go as much with tradition as possible, I buttered and floured my pans (Note: silicone pastry brushes do this job fine, who knew? Much better clean up too!). Often, I cheat and use a cooking spray and sprinkles of flour (so slack, I know.) A tip for flouring pans: use a small sieve, it's neater and gives great, easy coverage.
Then I also beat the batter by hand using a medium-large sturdy wisk. I was a little worried about not beating the sugar and eggs enough, but it was just fine. A good workout too!
The first batch I spooned in and used a knife to distribute the batter perfectly, but it was a pain. This traditional batter is really best piped in to the pan with a pastry bag and decently large tip. Another tip for the madeleines: the longer the batter sits out, the more the baking powder seems to work - meaning you'll get a bigger rise the longer the batter rests.
It took 15 minutes for each pan to bake, but you can easily tell when they are ready. I remember I saw someone online who clearly overbaked them. As soon as they golden, and a little brown on the edges they are good as gold. Don't overbake them as they will be the wrong colour, dry, less tasty, and more likely to stick to the pan.
Beautiful!
I let them cool and then coated them with chocolate (a blend of espresso dark and bittersweet chocolate, and white chocolate). I tried the bowl-spoon tempering. I think it helped a bit as the chocolate seemed to have a bit more snap then expected and the colour seemed a bit better (gloss wise), but I thought initially that it had worked better than the final product (at least as far as the gloss goes). Overall, super yummy Orange Chocolate Madeleines. Perfect for dreaming of spring.
1 comment:
Those sound yummmy!!! Makes me wish I had remembered to buy a pan. Seems like a lot of work though!
So for my saturdays deal, I am going to attempt sourcream coconut cupcakes with coconut cream cheese frosting. Hoping it comes out well and that everyone likes it!
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