Yes you should make these. If someone special is coming around for afternoon tea, or you have a lovely french friend who deserves some love in a scallop shaped cake. You can whip out a history lesson while you are waiting for them to cool....
Mandeleines are scallop shaped, sponge-like cookie cakes. There are two different stories of how they got thier name, one is that a young maid of the dethroned King of Poland, Stanislas Leczinski used to make these little cookie cakes for him. Her name was Mandeleine. The King loved these little cakes and sent the recipe to his daughter after she married Louis XV and they then became famous through tea parties.
The other...the one I choose to believe (just because I like to pretend that I could be one of the ladies selling cakes out of a basket)....In the 19th century a lady called Mandeleine would offer these little cookie cakes to people who were going on pilgramage to the Saint Jacques burial site at the Santiago de Compostela in Spain. The Scallop shape is the emblem of Saint James which is linked back to stories of the apostle, Saint James rescuing a knight covered in scallops...go figure! Around this time (the 19th century) it was quite popular for lady cake vendors to be carrying around baskets full of little cakes of which Mandeleines had become a popular basket filler. The lady cake vendors would go to crowded areas and yell louder than the next lady cake vendor to try and sell her basket of goodies before the rest. Mandeleines were especially popular in the town of Commercy in the Lorraine region of eastern France.
Traditional recipes use orange flower water and lemon zest, but this particular recipe has a bit of a kiwi twist with the use of Pohutakawa honey.
Note that you will need to go and purchase some Madeleine moulds before you start. I found mine at a secondhand store, all in the packaging, never been used. Whoever gave those away was really missing out.
Pohutakawa Honey and Burnt Butter Madeleines
This recipe was slightly adapted from Julie Le Clercs 'Cafe Collection'
180g butter
2 eggs
2 egg whites
1t rose water (or vanilla extract)
1/4C caster sugar
3T Pohutakawa Honey (or other strong flavoured honey)
1C flour
1C icing sugar
a pinch of salt
Heat the butter in a saucepan to melt. Increase the heat and cook. Sir until the milk solids in the butter brown. Strain into a heatproof bowl to remove the brown milk solids (I had to strain it quite a few times to be able to get the majority of them out). Leave to cool, but not too long that it sets.
Whisk the eggs, egg whites, caster sugar, rose water and honey until it is all combined. Sift the flour, icing sugar and salt and fold into the egg mixture to make a batter.
Fold the cooled butter into the batter. Cover with glad wrap, put it in the fridge and leave it for 2-24hours to thicken. Mine was super thick after 6 hours.
When you are ready, prehead the oven to 190degrees. Spray or lightly oil the Mandeleine shell moulds and put 1T of batter into each. Bake for 10min, or until puffed up and pale in the center but firm and slightly golden on the edges. Remove from the shells and leave to cool on a wire rack.
To serve either sprinkle with a little icing sugar, or put a little drizzle of honey on top. Perfect for a little bite to eat with your cup of tea or your glass of wine in the afternoon.
There are tonnes of other Mandeleine recipes online. Some dipped in chocoate, or chopped nuts. I even found Mandeleine sandwiches where they were halved after baking and filled with sorbet or icecream. Tea parties, I wish I could cater for tea parties 4 times a week.
