When my grandma still lived nearby my parents, my mom would often bake her madeleines, also known as French butter cakes. My grandma is Dutch and subscribes to the cake for breakfast mentality – can you tell we’re related?! – so mom would bake them for her from scratch and she’d snack on them with her morning tea. Even though I had always eaten them whenever she made them at home, I had never baked them myself, so I borrowed her signature shell mold to put my own spin on a delicious classic and made these fun color block madeleines! After all, the only thing they were missing was a little color.
If you’ve never eaten or made madeleines before, you’re in for a treat! They’re very unique from other baked goods because of the order of the ingredients. You actually stir in melted butter last, after you’ve combined eggs and the dry ingredients. In the end, they have the fluffy texture of cake with the signature madeleines flavors of butter and lemon because they’re made with both lemon juice and lemon zest.
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Although madeleines aren’t difficult to make, they do require a little more work than many of my other recipes. That’s simply because good madeleines require you to refrigerate the dough and even freeze the pan to ensure proper baking. Classic, well-baked madeleines have a signature bump on the back.
In order to make these delicious French cakes a good fit for Club Crafted, I decided to separate the prepared batter into 4 different colors and added them to the pan in chunks without stirring the colors at all. Thus, I created these pretty color blocked madeleines. They’re delicious on their own, but I added a light sprinkle of powdered sugar on top and quickly devoured most of the container without sharing.
Sadly, I have to give my mom the pan back, but I definitely think I’ll be purchasing my own to make more madeleines soon!
