I'm on a bit of a French kick right now. A coworker's delicious-looking snack of a madeleine one afternoon got me to thinking about making these, and thanks to my mom, a mini madeleine pan was procured almost immediately!
I used a recipe from
Joy of Baking, mostly because they gave a baking time specifically for mini madeleines. I think it turned out great, except that all told, it was a little over two hours from gathering ingredients to taking the last madeleines out of the pan. Not generally a problem, unless you start after 9 PM on a Monday evening and you have to go to work the next day.
My notes:
- Because of time constraints, I took the eggs out of the fridge about 15 minutes before using them; the end product came out fine, but next time I'll try to plan to have everything at room temperature. The results could be even better!
- Once again, I used less sugar than called for in the recipe; I scooped out 2/3 c. sugar, but I filled each 1/3 spoon about 7/8 full. I don't feel like calculating what fraction of a cup of sugar actually got used.
- Our sole remaining, and much-maligned hand mixer (great for whipped cream, not so much for cookie dough) has found another use: beating the eggs for this recipe. The whisk attachments worked great.
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| Light 'n frothy eggs. |
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| The batter after coming out of the fridge. |
- The madeleine molds should only be filled to maybe 50%, maybe a 1/2-3/4 teaspoon's worth of dough for each one. My first batch came out way too huge! I think by the end I got the size right.
- The silicone baking sheet was great; I sprayed nonstick spray twice, once before the first batch and once after the second, and it probably didn't need the second spray. And none of the madeleines stuck!
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| Madeleines made easy. Also, from the looks of these molds, gigantic. |
- The recipe says to bake 7-9 minutes at 375°F; I found 8 minutes to be ideal for our oven.
- The recipe made 75 mini madeleines, but the first tray used significantly more dough than subsequent trays, so I could probably have gotten 85 or so out of this batch. May it be said, though, that not all 75 made it into the storage containers...
Verdict: this will not be the last time I make madeleines! Now that I know roughly how long to bake the mini ones, I'd like to adapt different recipes. Nothing wrong with this one, but I want to try the one in our French cookbook!
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| The madeleines on the left probably came out of that batch you see in the molds above; the ones on the right came after I'd figured out that each mold didn't need so much dough. |
