My Lemon Madeleines Recipe: The PERFECT French Pastry at Home!

In this recipe, I'm creating a French classic, which is the Madeleine. The Madeleine, classically, is a small cake that can sit at room temperature for up to four days. We're going to give it a lemon soak with a little bit of lemon zest inside the Madeleine, and then we're going to coat one side in chocolate. Prior to starting this tutorial, you may want to watch our videos on tempering. To start the Madeleines, I have melted some butter here. You can melt it in the microwave or in a saucepan, and then let it cool down. I'm using a stand mixer, but you can do this by hand if you want to. So in the stand mixer, I'm combining some eggs, sugar, and some lemon zest. Combine these three ingredients first. That's combined. I'm going to sieve the flour and the baking powder together. I'm going to place the salt on top. Now I'm going to add in the inverted sugar. I'm going to add in the dry ingredients and mix it until it just comes together. Once your butter has cooled enough, drizzle it into the mixture. Butter is all combined in. I'm now going to transfer the mixture to a bowl. I'm going to place plastic wrap on the surface of the Madeleine mixture. Now this will only make one tray of Madeleines, which is 12 individual Madeleines, but there's no problem at all to increase the recipe if you want to make more trays. This now has plastic wrap pressed into the surface. Then it's going to go into the fridge for a minimum of eight hours. We can leave it overnight before we pipe it into the trays for baking. This is a Madeleine tin. This is a modern one, so it does have a Teflon coating on the outside. You can get more traditional Madeleine tins that don't have that. We are still going to grease it with a little bit of melted butter. So we just brush that into each cavity. Don't let it pull. This is a mixture that I made yesterday, so it has sat for 24 hours in the fridge. I'm now going to pipe it into the Madeleine tin. I'm using a piping nozzle, but you don't have to. At this stage, you need to set your oven. I'm using a fan-forced oven, and I'm setting it at 200 degrees Celsius. Now we're going to fill each cavity three quarters of the way. Place these into the oven, then we drop the temperature to 190 degrees Celsius for a fan-forced oven. These are going to bake for eight to ten minutes. Now, traditionally, the Madeleine, when it's baked, will have a little hump, and that is caused because we cook it at such a high temperature. The outside of the cake starts to cook. Then the batter has nowhere to go but to push up through the center. It then continues to bake through the center. While this is in the oven, I'm going to prepare my lemon soap. You're going to love Savor online classes. We add a new tutorial to the library weekly. You have unlimited access. And if you like my style, my explanations, you can learn so much more. The lemon glaze is really quite simple. I have some lemon juice here. We're going to combine it with some icing sugar. And then just simply stir it together. Make sure your icing sugar is sieved. And do this while the Madeleines are in the oven. This is what the Madeleines should look like. I explained that peak where the batter has nowhere to go. They're a really beautiful cake to eat, especially with that touch of lemon. We're going to accentuate that lemon flavor. Place them all first on a cooling rack. I'm going to brush the lemon syrup on both sides. These need to completely cool before we have the next step of coating the base with chocolate. I'm going to temper some white chocolate. When you're coloring chocolate, it is easier to sieve it in before you start melting the chocolate. So I have some oil-soluble color here, which really gives an indication of the lemon flavor. The agitation of stirring the buttons as you're melting them will help to break down that color and homogenize it and incorporate it together with the chocolate. I've got this in a glass bowl, but it's best to use a plastic bowl. I've just got this in a glass bowl so you can see what's happening. In a plastic bowl, melt the chocolate in the microwave. Only heating it for between 15 to 30 seconds at a time, stirring in between. Stop heating once you get a half-solid chocolate, half-liquid, and then just thoroughly stir it. Ensure before you start this step that all your madeleines are completely cold and that you have clean molds ready to place the chocolate on the base of the madeleine. I've tempered the chocolate. We have some great tutorials on tempering in our video library if you need some assistance with tempering. I'm going to transfer the chocolate to a disposable piping bag. We're going to pipe a 10-millimeter strip inside a clean madeleine pan. Make sure the madeleine pan is cool. So we pipe right down the center. Now, it's important you put enough chocolate. If you don't put enough chocolate, the madeleine is going to stick inside the mold. Then we press to spread the chocolate out. We place these in the fridge for about 10 minutes. Let them come back to room temperature before unmolding. Gorgeous chocolate coating that has a little bit of a shine. Then we get the traditional side of the madeleine where we get that raised batter up through the center. And here we have my finished lemon madeleines. If you enjoyed that episode, you will love my channel. Subscribe today for even more tutorials on chocolate and baking. Best of all, it's free, so get on it.