- If you've ever wanted to make a fancy French dessert
that's beyond delicious but won't break your heart,
you've gotta try my madeleine recipe.
These tiny little cakes melt in your mouth
and have the most amazing flavor.
Hey, you're watching Preppy Kitchen, where I, John Kanell,
teach you how to make delicious homemade dishes
to share with your family and friends.
These madeleines won't make themselves,
so let's get started.
First off, we're gonna melt
7 tablespoons, or 98 grams, of butter,
and you have a choice here.
You could either just melt this in the microwave,
or you could take it onto the stovetop
and brown it a little bit.
Plop that butter in there,
and then just swirl it around every once in a while.
It'll start to foam up, but keep an eye on it.
While my butter's melting,
I'm gonna add the dry ingredients together.
There's only two of them:
100 grams, or 3/4 cup, of all-purpose flour,
and 1/4 teaspoon of baking powder.
Is this a cheat? Kind of a little bit.
This should be a traditional cake
that's leavened with only the egg whites.
However, to get that nice hump,
a quarter teaspoon of baking powder goes a long way.
Sift it out.
I hear some butter sizzling.
Keep an eye on that butter, because if you're browning it,
it can go from wonderful and caramel
to burnt fairly quickly, so (vocalizes) eye on it.
Whisk up those dry ingredients.
Okay, that butter is super close,
but we can set aside our dry ingredients right now
and either get your stand mixer out
or your electric hand mixer,
we are gonna be beating these eggs for a long time,
so it's not time to do it by hand.
Crack two large room temperature eggs into your bowl,
then add 1/2 cup, or 100 grams, of granulated sugar.
In you go.
We're gonna beat this on high for about eight minutes,
or until the mixture's really thick, glossy, light-colored,
and you have a trail being left by the whisk.
I'm gonna show you what that looks like, though.
(mixer whirring)
Mix, mix, mix. Watch your clock.
(smooth music)
Wait a second.
If you're browning your butter,
I just wanted to mention really quickly
that a lot of the butter, or some of the butter,
is gonna cook off, because there's water in there,
there's milk solids, it's not pure fat.
So go ahead and add in 1/2 tablespoon of butter
after it's cooked down.
It'll bring you closer to the original seven tablespoons.
Mix that in there, and then back to mixing you go,
it's not there yet.
(mixer whirring)
It's lighter in color, it's glossy,
but it still needs to thicken up a bit,
has a couple minutes left.
(smooth music)
Okay, aren't you glad you didn't do that by hand?
Can you imagine? What?
As you might well be aware,
this is a génoise cake that we're making.
It's an Italian-style dessert
where you have egg whites and egg yolks
whipped, whipped, whipped, whipped, whipped
until there's a lot of air bubbles in them,
which you might see here.
This is leaving a trail when I move the whisk around.
It's ready, so I'm gonna fold in
the dry ingredients right now.
Gently, gently, gently,
we do not wanna disturb those bubbles,
so we wanna retain as many as possible
while still having a nice homogenous mixture.
Madeleines are a delicious treat,
and they're not as finicky as macarons.
But a madeleine is gonna be really light,
melt in your mouth,
and just quite delicate, not like a pound cake.
Continue folding until it is nice and mixed.
Do you love my unflavored madeleines I'm making?
My gosh! (laughing)
(beep)
So earlier you could have added in
a teaspoon of vanilla and a teaspoon of lemon zest,
that's fine too right now,
because we have a little bit more mixing to do.
I can't believe myself. Okay, there we go.
Continue folding that in. (chuckles)
Just found my last pocket of flour.
You can see I have a nice flowy mixture right now.
This is perfect.
The last thing we're gonna do
is add this precious caramel-colored butter.
It really is so fragrant.
I highly recommend browning butter
for every recipe you try out.
Okay, so we're just gonna drizzle that in.
It's also gonna add a lot of contrast.
When you use browned butter,
you have all these little dark specks mixed in,
and it's very similar to when you have vanilla beans,
and you add the vanilla bean in,
and you see that little play of black dots, I love it.
Okay, so right now we're gonna fold in
all of this butter once again.
This mixture is really beautiful and silky,
look at that, falling gently off of my spatula.
That's done.
This gets covered with plastic,
and covered like you would a custard,
so cover it all the way so we don't have a surface skin.
We're chilling this for an hour.
We wanna retain the bubbles,
but also shrink them down by making them colder,
so that when we bake them, they expand and really puff up
to make a beautiful, light, airy cookie.
You're gonna love this.
Into the fridge you go.
We're not done, people, there's more to do.
While that's chilling,
I'm just gonna brush my madeleine pan with some butter.
I'm doing this now
because I also wanna chill the pan in the freezer.
The madeleine was invented by Proust, who was a writer.
Proust described what a madeleine was,
but he wasn't a baker, he didn't leave a recipe.
It's been kind of a mystery
that people tried to reverse engineer and solve,
and the consensus that I read
was that madeleines were basically stale teacakes.
He was very sickly, he didn't get out much,
so he probably would have had
a lot of older baked goods hanging around,
especially when he had a guest over for tea.
You can read more about it on various publications online,
or if you know the full story,
I am all ears, let me know in the comments.
Okay, these are well brushed with butter.
As this cools down, I'm brushing away some excess butter
because I wanna have nice definition
on my pretty little cookies.
All they get is a dusting of powdered sugar at most,
it's really all about what the bake gives you.
This is going into the fridge,
and we'll be back in a second with the magic of editing.
(glockenspiel glisses)
After your batter and pan
have had about an hour of chill time,
set your oven to 375, and once it's heated up,
pull everything out, and it's time to scoop.
You're gonna be adding
almost exactly one tablespoon of batter
to each of these little scallop shells.
Plop it right in there.
I wanna say, it's very important to treat the batter gently,
so scoop it out.
If you don't have a triggered ice cream scoop,
just use two spoons and go (mumbles).
Don't squeeze it, mush it, whatever else,
because you're losing all the air bubbles
that you so diligently worked for.
Continue this process until these are all filled up.
These cookies are such a delight.
They are well worth the effort.
These are gonna go into the oven at 375
for about I would say nine to 12 minutes, usually around 11,
it depends on your oven and also the thickness of your pan.
Into the oven, 375, and keep an eye on it.
Once your madeleines are out of the oven and cooled,
you'll see they have that beautiful little hump.
Once they're cooled, it's time to add
just a little bit of powdered sugar.
So I like to take my finished madeleines
and hold them sideways,
and that way the powdered sugar
gives you more contrast for the shell shape,
but it's totally up to you.
Before I take a bite, if you like this recipe,
check out my Cookie playlist.
All my favorite cookies in one playlist for you.
But now it's time for a bite.
That was delightful.
It is so airy and delicate on the inside,
and melts in your mouth, but then it's crispy on the edge,
and that play of browned butter,
vanilla, and lemon is amazing.
I really hope you get a chance to make this recipe,
and if you like my videos,
hit that Like button and subscribe,
and I'll see you in the next Cookie video.
Even though these are cakes, they look like cookies.