Little Lemon and Raspberry Madeleines

I think you gonna like this one. It is a sweet, starchy (but in a good way), tangy and lemony- oh so very lemony dessert or snack for munchies hour!

These are Lemon and Raspberry Mandeleines from 'The Little Kitchen In Paris, cooking with Rachel Khoo.'

This is a delightful little recipe. They are delicate, light, fluffy and oh so yummy. In the blog following this one I will show you my own inspiration from this recipe and how I have made it less 'fancy' for lack of a better word and more relaxed and casual, but still with the wow factor and the deliciousness.

Let's get started then shall we? :)

The first thing you'll need to do as always, is preheat your oven and prepare your chosen tin/tray or mould. Get your Madeleine tin and you want to grease it with melted butter and flour. This will be around;

- 1 tbsp of Melted Butter- whatever you have lying round the house
- 1 tbsp of Plain Flour- sprinkle this onto the tin and then bang it on the counter, face side down to get rid of all the excess flour.

This is a full-proof way of ensuring your baked goods aren't going to stick to whatever you are baking in.

Next you will need to get started on the Madeleine dough. For this you will need;

- 200g Melted Butter
- 130g Caster Sugar
- 3 Free- Range Eggs
- 200g Plain Flour
- 1 tsp of Baking Powder
- 1 Lemon- Zest only

- The recipe calls for some honey- I didn't have any, so I used Maple Syrup. Use a dribble of either.

(See the maple syrup was my own addition to make it more unique to me. I didn't want the sweetness of honey as I don't really dig it. But I did want the more caramalised, wholesome flavour that maple syrup gives me. It isn't as sweet as honey, well it is sweet but in a different way, but still satisfies my sweet tooth.)

- 60ml of Milk

Melt the 200g butter in a pan on a low heat, I set mine to 4 on the hob. I didn't want to melt it too fast as then this could risk burning the butter. When melted, leave aside..

The butter has separated. The clear part is clarified butter and the cloudy part is where the butter still has the fat on top of it.

Next put the 130g of sugar into a bowl along with the 3 eggs. Whisk this until light, thick, but not too thick.

(you don't want to make any impressions on the dough yet, so only whisk until thicker, but not so much as it will set on top of itself for a few seconds) and fluffy pale. It should look like the mix when you are making a Swiss Roll. You know that thick, pale 'eggy' look, before it is thick enough to set on the surface? That one!

This is what it should look life after a short whisk

Then this after around 5 minutes. See the butter still isn't fully incorporated?

This is what you want it to look like. Thick and glossy.

Once you have achieved this, add the melted butter, whisk it on a high speed for 30 seconds or so. This will make the mixture look a little darker, smooth and silky. Then it will return to that pale colour, but will be a little more liquid.

There's my hand :)

Now you want to add in the 200g of plain flour, along with the baking powder, zest, maple syrup in my case and add the milk.

I added the milk and the syrup in first and then the flour, baking powder and zest. I gave this dough, one last fast whisk to give it a good mix.

Now you want to put this into any container you have lying round that is free and clean to use. Pour the dough batter into this and then cover with cling film. You want to actually touch the batter surface with the cling film, this will stop the dough from forming a skin.

If you didn't put it directly onto the dough, then it could form a skin that is like the one you get if you leave gravy lying around.

After around 15 minutes, or however long it takes you to do the dishes, take the dough out of the fridge and put into a piping bag, fitted with a plain nozzle or just snip the piping bag to give you a small hole at the bottom. They both do this same job.

Although, if you are going to just snip the piping bag, wait until you have it filled or the batter will go in one end and out the other the minute you fill the bag. With the nozzle choice, you can twist the end of the bag and stick it into the nozzle and this will stop the batter from spilling out.

Once the piping bag is filled you want to pipe the batter into to Madeleine tin. Only pipe to just before the edge, around 2cm, very little. This will allow the Madeleine to keep its iconic shape and will stop it from overflowing like a few of mine did at the start.

Once you have the moulds filled, pop a small raspberry into the center of each one, but make sure not to go all the way to the bottom, or it won't hold the curd. After all the raspberries are in, pop these into the oven at 180C fan assisted oven for around 15 minutes or until they are golden brown on the top and a little paler around the rim of the raspberry.

When these are baked then you need to pipe a little lemon curd into each one. Rachel Khoo, from The Little Kitchen In Paris says this is to make the lemon curd melt and make the cake moist. She's so right- yum!

You can use either a piping bag, snipped to give a small hole, or a sandwich baggy snipped the same. Pipe a little curd into each one and then leave these until completely cool.

And that's all folks- to quote one very mischievous rabbit and his carrot. Bugs Bunny indeed!

Take care when taking these out of their moulds as they are extremely delicate and fragile. One good fumble of the fingers and these bad boys are going crack and crumble.

Hope you liked these, I know I did. Thanks Rachel Khoo for putting a very good clip on YouTube. YouTube is great for finding out how to bake things by the way, or btw as the kidz say.