Vanilla Lemon Madeleines

Prep: Rub the lemon with salt or flour to clean the surface, rinse and dry. Grate off the zest with a zester, avoiding the white pith (it will be bitter). Mix the zest with all of the sugar and let it sit for a while until the lemon aroma comes out. Grease and flour the molds (I skipped this step out of laziness and the cakes didnt release very well). Sift the dry ingredients together once. Juice the lemon and weigh out the required amount. Melt the butter over a bain-marie (hot water bath).

Add the whole beaten egg to the lemon-zested sugar and mix well, then add the milk and lemon juice and mix until combined.

Sift in the dry ingredients and scrape in the vanilla seeds.

Fold until evenly combined.

Add the melted butter to the batter in several additions, stirring to combine each time. Dont stir in circles; use a Z-shaped folding motion. The batter is then ready.

Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 1 hour, or overnight.

Take the batter out of the fridge about 30 minutes before baking to bring it back toward room temperature. Gently stir to loosen, transfer to a piping bag, snip a small opening, pipe into the molds, and tap the molds on the counter a few times to release air bubbles.

Place in the middle rack of a thoroughly preheated oven.

Bake at 200 c top heat, 175 c bottom heat for about 12 minutes.

The above quantity is for two trays of my aunts 8-cavity slim shell molds. If you use other molds, such as plump shell molds, adjust the baking time accordingly. For plump shell molds, the amount of batter per cavity is larger, so the baking time needs to be increased. You can refer to my previous madeleine recipe as a guide.

If you dont have almond flour, you can replace it entirely with cake flour; the texture will be different, though.

Finished madeleines.

Finished madeleines.

Finished madeleines.

Finished madeleines.