Originated from France, madeleines are small sponge cakes with a shell – like shape, baked in pans with shell-shaped depressions. Make sure to use good butter as it does make a big difference.

Ingredients

140g Butter

140g Caster sugar

140g Plain Flour (or 115g Plain flour + 25g Almond flour)

1tsp Baking powder

3 Eggs

1 Egg yolk

1tsp Vanilla extract

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 190c. Lightly grease madeleine tins with butter.

Melt butter in saucepan, then leave to cool.

Place eggs, egg yolk, vanilla extract and caster sugar in a large bowl and whisk until pale and thick.

Sift in flour and baking powder and fold in. Then fold in the melted butter.

Spoon the mixture into the prepared tin and bake for 8 – 10 minutes or until the middle is risen and golden brown

Remove the baked madeleines from the tin and leave to cool before serving.

Notes – I add 1tsp of grated orange zest into the mixture as I love the fragrance of orange zest. Some people replace vanilla extract with almond extract.

Once I added some cocoa powder to make chocolate madeleines. For some reasons, my madeleines didn’t rise as much, but they still tasted good.