Earl Grey Madeleines

So who doesn’t like a madeleine for afternoon tea?!

This recipe is in the March/April issue of Tea Time Magazine, one of the magazines that I just can’t wait to get every other month. I pore through the recipes, longingly look at all the beautiful bone china teaware and wish I could buy something from every one of them. And make note of all the possible tea places that I would just have to go to should I make it to many exotic places – in the US and abroad.

I still don’t know if a madeleine is a cookie or a cake, but mostly feels like a cake to me, which puts it at the top of my favorites list. And this one is really so easy to make and absolutely yummy.

I mostly followed this recipe for madeleines as-is. Where I deviated was in the honey I used (didn’t have orange blossom honey, so used what I had), added a little more than 1 teaspoon of Earl Grey tea (a couple pinches more), and also decorated mine a bit differently.

But otherwise, I followed it pretty closely, it worked perfectly as directed (nice little hump in the back but not too much, like you want with a madeleine).

I also followed the directions exactly when it came to putting 1.5 tablespoons of batter into each well of the tin. It felt like that filled them rather full, and yet they baked up perfectly without growing too big for each individual form.

Mixing them up was really as simple having one bowl for dry, one for wet ingredients, and gently mixing them together before filling the form. And don’t forget to brush that melted butter into each tin so they just slide out perfectly when baked!

If there is anything I would change about this dessert, it would be my use of the white chocolate decoration – though I don’t think I overdid my white chocolate dip, the Earl Grey flavor is pretty delicate since I didn’t have any other orange or citrus in the batter to amplify the bergamot, so the white chocolate was almost a little too much, and almost overpowered the flavor of the cake itself. So I’d probably cut back on the decor a little bit. Or maybe add a drop of orange essence into the cake to see if that balances the dessert a little more.

Earl Grey Madeleines

• Servings: 14 madeleines
• Time: 45 minutes
• Difficulty: easy
• Print

Ingredients

• 1/2 c. all-purpose flour
• 1/3 c. granulated sugar (I use super fine)
• 1 tsp. loose-leaf Earl Grey tea (grind them a bit with mortar/pestle if leaves are too big, or very briefly pulse in a spice grinder)
• 1/2 tsp. baking powder
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• 1/2 c. unsalted butter, melted, plus a little extra for prepping the pan
• 2 large eggs, room temperature
• 1 Tbsp. orange blossom honey
• 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
• 4 oz. coarsely chopped white chocolate, melted
• For decorating with white chocolate flowers – a few ounces of white (vanilla) melting chocolates, food coloring if you want to color the center of the flowers, piping bag to pipe the chocolate

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350° Fahrenheit. For a madeleine pan with 16 wells, brush 14 of them with the extra melted butter.

First, whisk together the dry ingredients – flour, sugar, tea, baking powder, and salt – and set aside.

Second, whisk together the melted butter, eggs, honey, and vanilla extract.

Gradually whisk the butter mixture into the flour mixture until combined and smooth (it will be very liquid). Spoon 1.5 Tbsp. into each well of the prepared pan (the wells will be almost full).

Bake until the madeleines are puffed up and golden, 8-10 minutes (they will just begin to get golden brown, the edges a little browner). Let them cool in the pan for 5 minutes, then remove and let cool completely on a wire rack.

To decorate with white chocolate and the flowers, first melt the 4 oz. of white chocolate bar and partially dip the madeleines into the chocolate (either end). Set the dipped madeleines on a parchment-covered pan to let them dry.

Separately, melt the vanilla melting wafers and split so you have a little bit you can color with the orange (or other color) food coloring. Put both white and colored chocolate into separate piping bags. Pipe flowers onto acetate (or parchment should work as well) – five connecting circles, and the colored circle in the middle. Let the flowers dry (I put them into my fridge or freezer to speed up their setting). (You can make these flowers ahead of time so they’re all set and ready to be added onto the madeleines when you’re ready to dip the madeleines in white chocolate.)

Add the flowers to the madeleines (if the white chocolate on your madeleines is already drying, you can dab a little of the piping chocolate onto the bag and use that to set the flowers onto the madeleines).

Let fully set, and serve.