Burnt Butter Honey Madeleines

The perfect breakfast

It's no secret that I love madeleines - I own three different madeleine trays, and I've blogged them six times already!  (Seven if you count the madeleine post from my How to Eat project). Chocolate madeleines, green tea madeleines, Nigella's plain madeleines, and of course, my favourite recipe: the Roux brothers' honey madeleines. I made them for my mum's epic birthday party in 2008, I once coated them in chocolate, and I once made them when I was clearing out the pantry. So, why yet another post on these delectable French cakelets?

Well, immodest of me to say it, I know, but I've improved on the recipe and I'm super excited to share it with you! The secret? Burnt butter. You have to melt the butter anyway, so why not let it carry on cooking and take on that gorgeous burnt butter aroma and colour? Easy easy and it gives the most amazing aroma and flavour to the little madeleines.

So to make burnt butter, you melt butter, (use a light coloured pan so you can see the colour change)...

...and allow it to cook until it begins to foam and bubble and hiss...

...and keep going, stirring with a heatproof spatula, until the hissing subsides, the milk solids separate (those are the little brown flecks below), and that lovely nutty, burnt butter aroma starts to waft up. You can see I was a little timid with my burnt butter and it was still light gold in colour; you can let it get a bit browner if you like. The aroma was definitely there though! Heaven!

Brown butter

Now, to the madeleine mixture itself. I've gone on about this before, but one reason I love the Roux Brothers' recipe so much is that it's incredibly easy, and all you need to do is whisk the ingredients lightly. They even explicitly state: "Don't overmix it", lest you start working too hard!

Egg and sugars lightly whisked

With all the dry ingredients, honey and burnt butter

It is so easy, in fact, that I whipped up this batch for a lazy weekend breakfast, when my eyes were barely open and I hadn't had my morning coffee yet. Perhaps the lack of caffeine explains the messy trays. Oops!

Filled trays

Using a piping bag makes the tray-filling process faster and neater, but I was too lazy to fill the piping bag and just used two spoons.  No matter, the end result was delicious nonetheless!

Baked madeleines

Pretty shells!

I told you I have more than one madeleine tray, and here are some baby-sized ones! (The uneven colouring on the mini ones is due to the fact that my tray is very long, and that my oven has hot spots on the edges - luckily they didn't dry out though. Phew!)

Mini-madeleines

Aaah... what a lovely breakfast! If you haven't made madeleines before, (or even if you have), give these a go! They're super-easy and so lusciously light and fluffy - a fab treat for breakfast or afternoon tea, so pretty and elegant. Enjoy!

Burnt Butter Honey Madeleines

Recipe adapted from The Roux Brothers on Patisserie

Ingredients

90 grams unsalted butter

2 eggs

75 grams caster sugar

1 tablespoon soft brown sugar

Pinch of salt

90 grams plain flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 tablespoon honey

20 grams extra melted unsalted butter, for greasing

Method

In a light coloured pan, (so you can see the colour change), melt the 90 grams butter over a medium heat. Continue cooking until the butter foams up and starts to sizzle, and the milk solids separate. Stir with a heatproof spatula to prevent the milk solids sticking to the pan. Once the sizzling has subsided and the butter had turned from yellow to a medium brown colour, (and most importantly, smells amazing), take off the heat and set aside to cool slightly.

Place the eggs, sugars and salt in a bowl, and work lightly with a whisk until the ingredients are combined and the mixture begins to turn light in colour. Sift the flour and baking powder, and fold them gently into the egg mixture. Add the vanilla, honey and melted butter, and mix gently until completely amalgamated. Cover the bowl with clingfilm and refrigerate for thirty minutes.

Preheat the oven to 200C.

Brush the inside of your madeleine tray with the extra melted butter. Spoon or pipe the madeleine mixture into the tray, filling the indentations about to just under the top. Bake for about 5 minutes (for small madeleines) and 10 minutes (for the larger ones). Be careful not to overcook them, or they will dry out.

As soon as they are baked, invert the madeleines onto a cake rack. Eat as soon as you possibly can.

Makes 24 - 36 madeleines, depending on tin size

The perfect breakfast

It's no secret that I love madeleines - I own three different madeleine trays, and I've blogged them six times already!  (Seven if you count the madeleine post from my How to Eat project). Chocolate madeleines, green tea madeleines, Nigella's plain madeleines, and of course, my favourite recipe: the Roux brothers' honey madeleines. I made them for my mum's epic birthday party in 2008, I once coated them in chocolate, and I once made them when I was clearing out the pantry. So, why yet another post on these delectable French cakelets?

Well, immodest of me to say it, I know, but I've improved on the recipe and I'm super excited to share it with you! The secret? Burnt butter. You have to melt the butter anyway, so why not let it carry on cooking and take on that gorgeous burnt butter aroma and colour? Easy easy and it gives the most amazing aroma and flavour to the little madeleines.

So to make burnt butter, you melt butter, (use a light coloured pan so you can see the colour change)...

...and allow it to cook until it begins to foam and bubble and hiss...

...and keep going, stirring with a heatproof spatula, until the hissing subsides, the milk solids separate (those are the little brown flecks below), and that lovely nutty, burnt butter aroma starts to waft up. You can see I was a little timid with my burnt butter and it was still light gold in colour; you can let it get a bit browner if you like. The aroma was definitely there though! Heaven!

Brown butter

Now, to the madeleine mixture itself. I've gone on about this before, but one reason I love the Roux Brothers' recipe so much is that it's incredibly easy, and all you need to do is whisk the ingredients lightly. They even explicitly state: "Don't overmix it", lest you start working too hard!

Egg and sugars lightly whisked

With all the dry ingredients, honey and burnt butter

It is so easy, in fact, that I whipped up this batch for a lazy weekend breakfast, when my eyes were barely open and I hadn't had my morning coffee yet. Perhaps the lack of caffeine explains the messy trays. Oops!

Filled trays

Using a piping bag makes the tray-filling process faster and neater, but I was too lazy to fill the piping bag and just used two spoons.  No matter, the end result was delicious nonetheless!

Baked madeleines

Pretty shells!

I told you I have more than one madeleine tray, and here are some baby-sized ones! (The uneven colouring on the mini ones is due to the fact that my tray is very long, and that my oven has hot spots on the edges - luckily they didn't dry out though. Phew!)

Mini-madeleines

Aaah... what a lovely breakfast! If you haven't made madeleines before, (or even if you have), give these a go! They're super-easy and so lusciously light and fluffy - a fab treat for breakfast or afternoon tea, so pretty and elegant. Enjoy!

Burnt Butter Honey Madeleines

Recipe adapted from The Roux Brothers on Patisserie

Ingredients

90 grams unsalted butter

2 eggs

75 grams caster sugar

1 tablespoon soft brown sugar

Pinch of salt

90 grams plain flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 tablespoon honey

20 grams extra melted unsalted butter, for greasing

Method

In a light coloured pan, (so you can see the colour change), melt the 90 grams butter over a medium heat. Continue cooking until the butter foams up and starts to sizzle, and the milk solids separate. Stir with a heatproof spatula to prevent the milk solids sticking to the pan. Once the sizzling has subsided and the butter had turned from yellow to a medium brown colour, (and most importantly, smells amazing), take off the heat and set aside to cool slightly.

Place the eggs, sugars and salt in a bowl, and work lightly with a whisk until the ingredients are combined and the mixture begins to turn light in colour. Sift the flour and baking powder, and fold them gently into the egg mixture. Add the vanilla, honey and melted butter, and mix gently until completely amalgamated. Cover the bowl with clingfilm and refrigerate for thirty minutes.

Preheat the oven to 200C.

Brush the inside of your madeleine tray with the extra melted butter. Spoon or pipe the madeleine mixture into the tray, filling the indentations about to just under the top. Bake for about 5 minutes (for small madeleines) and 10 minutes (for the larger ones). Be careful not to overcook them, or they will dry out.

As soon as they are baked, invert the madeleines onto a cake rack. Eat as soon as you possibly can.

Makes 24 - 36 madeleines, depending on tin size

reade more... Résuméabuiyad

From the pantry...

When I made Nigella's double potato and halloumi bake, I mentioned that I hadn't been cooking at home enough. (Excuses, excuses!) That frustration resulted in me searching through the kitchen to see what ingredients we actually had in the pantry...


In the freezer...

And on the shelfy thing that lives between the stove and the fridge.

And boy, I have accumulated a lot of food in the few short months I've been here! Rice, pasta, curry pastes, oils, packet-fixes, frozen veggies and other leftovers. After this, I made a big effort to actually cook at home, using up ingredients we already had. I'm happy to say the following meals were the result!


Rindfleischtopf mit Rotwein

This dinner, from my Dr. Oetker Eintopf (one-pot) recipe book, was a deliciously soupy beef stew, with a lot of red wine added. The red wine in question was the cheap red wine which we'd bought for Glühwein.

For the last 20 minutes or so, I chucked in a few handfuls of short tube pasta which had been in my pantry for months.

These little circles of pasta cooked in the stew, absorbing all the delicious beefy, winey flavours.

Delicious! A bowl of this with a DVD of Mad Men is a great night in!


Frikadellen with Sweet Potato Chips


This wasn't quite as glamorous as the red wine stew, but it was a nice and easy little dinner nonetheless. I took the Frikadellen out of the freezer, and chucked them in the oven with some McCain Sweet Potato Superfries that a nice PR lady sent me a while back. The Frikadellen are, well, better when freshly cooked, but I quite liked the superfries - I think of them like roast sweet potatoes, but without the peeling and chopping.


Chicken Tikka Masala with Pilaf and Cucumber Raita

Shortly after I bought Jamie's Ministry of Food, which has a whole chapter devoted to make-at-home curries, I went out and bought a bunch of curry pastes, thinking that freshly made curries would be a great weeknight dinner. That, of course, was some months ago, and with the pastes rapidly approaching their use-by date, I thought I'd better get cracking!

The first curry I made was chicken tikka masala, (Patak's brand) made even more aromatic by the addition of onions, coriander root and chilli.



Very inauthentically (even considering that chicken tikka masala is an inauthentic dish itself), we added carrots and cauliflower for a higher veggie content.


Jamie's recipe makes a huge amount - even though I halved his recipe (which serves 4), there was way too much for the 2 of us! But leftovers were good the next day!

To go with, I made a pilaf (just plain rice, with stock, spices, nuts and onions), and a cucumber raita.



Roast Chicken "Tikka Masala" with Muttar Halloumi

Another Indian style meal, this one to use up the remainder of the tikka masala curry paste. Rather than making a curry again, I mixed the paste with natural yoghurt and used it to marinate a chicken. (Wear gloves! Marinating a raw chicken in hot curry paste is an unpleasant task!) I let it sit in the fridge overnight, and I put it in the oven as soon as I got home from work the next day. While it was cooking, I made a muttar paneer, but with halloumi instead of paneer. (I'd luckily found some cheap halloumi at the market and thought this might be a nice way to use it). I hadn't made muttar paneer in over 5 years (see here for proof!) but now I'm thinking I really should make it more often! It's delicious.


The chicken was a little brown coming out of the oven due to the marinade, but didn't taste burnt at all. In fact, it was lovely and juicy thanks to the yoghurt! There were heaps of delicious pan juices too.


Madeleines

And finally, the madeleines you see at the top of this post. I can't really say that making these helped to clear out my pantry, but they certainly are a storecupboard recipe. Flour, butter, baking powder, vanilla, honey, sugar... and that's about it! The Roux Brothers' recipe doesn't even need an electric mixer, just some light folding with a spatula. 15 minutes of easy work and 6 minutes in the oven (and an hour of resting time in bewteen if you can be bothered) and you have a tray of delicious, light, fragrant cakelets.


What foods do you have lurking in your pantry?

When I made Nigella's double potato and halloumi bake, I mentioned that I hadn't been cooking at home enough. (Excuses, excuses!) That frustration resulted in me searching through the kitchen to see what ingredients we actually had in the pantry...


In the freezer...

And on the shelfy thing that lives between the stove and the fridge.

And boy, I have accumulated a lot of food in the few short months I've been here! Rice, pasta, curry pastes, oils, packet-fixes, frozen veggies and other leftovers. After this, I made a big effort to actually cook at home, using up ingredients we already had. I'm happy to say the following meals were the result!


Rindfleischtopf mit Rotwein

This dinner, from my Dr. Oetker Eintopf (one-pot) recipe book, was a deliciously soupy beef stew, with a lot of red wine added. The red wine in question was the cheap red wine which we'd bought for Glühwein.

For the last 20 minutes or so, I chucked in a few handfuls of short tube pasta which had been in my pantry for months.

These little circles of pasta cooked in the stew, absorbing all the delicious beefy, winey flavours.

Delicious! A bowl of this with a DVD of Mad Men is a great night in!


Frikadellen with Sweet Potato Chips


This wasn't quite as glamorous as the red wine stew, but it was a nice and easy little dinner nonetheless. I took the Frikadellen out of the freezer, and chucked them in the oven with some McCain Sweet Potato Superfries that a nice PR lady sent me a while back. The Frikadellen are, well, better when freshly cooked, but I quite liked the superfries - I think of them like roast sweet potatoes, but without the peeling and chopping.


Chicken Tikka Masala with Pilaf and Cucumber Raita

Shortly after I bought Jamie's Ministry of Food, which has a whole chapter devoted to make-at-home curries, I went out and bought a bunch of curry pastes, thinking that freshly made curries would be a great weeknight dinner. That, of course, was some months ago, and with the pastes rapidly approaching their use-by date, I thought I'd better get cracking!

The first curry I made was chicken tikka masala, (Patak's brand) made even more aromatic by the addition of onions, coriander root and chilli.



Very inauthentically (even considering that chicken tikka masala is an inauthentic dish itself), we added carrots and cauliflower for a higher veggie content.


Jamie's recipe makes a huge amount - even though I halved his recipe (which serves 4), there was way too much for the 2 of us! But leftovers were good the next day!

To go with, I made a pilaf (just plain rice, with stock, spices, nuts and onions), and a cucumber raita.



Roast Chicken "Tikka Masala" with Muttar Halloumi

Another Indian style meal, this one to use up the remainder of the tikka masala curry paste. Rather than making a curry again, I mixed the paste with natural yoghurt and used it to marinate a chicken. (Wear gloves! Marinating a raw chicken in hot curry paste is an unpleasant task!) I let it sit in the fridge overnight, and I put it in the oven as soon as I got home from work the next day. While it was cooking, I made a muttar paneer, but with halloumi instead of paneer. (I'd luckily found some cheap halloumi at the market and thought this might be a nice way to use it). I hadn't made muttar paneer in over 5 years (see here for proof!) but now I'm thinking I really should make it more often! It's delicious.


The chicken was a little brown coming out of the oven due to the marinade, but didn't taste burnt at all. In fact, it was lovely and juicy thanks to the yoghurt! There were heaps of delicious pan juices too.


Madeleines

And finally, the madeleines you see at the top of this post. I can't really say that making these helped to clear out my pantry, but they certainly are a storecupboard recipe. Flour, butter, baking powder, vanilla, honey, sugar... and that's about it! The Roux Brothers' recipe doesn't even need an electric mixer, just some light folding with a spatula. 15 minutes of easy work and 6 minutes in the oven (and an hour of resting time in bewteen if you can be bothered) and you have a tray of delicious, light, fragrant cakelets.


What foods do you have lurking in your pantry?

reade more... Résuméabuiyad