Mandarin Madeleines

So I'm back in the kitchen after the cooking marathon of Christmas and New Year.

I've had a KitchenAid on my 'to buy' list for ages, and lucky me, my sister bought me one for Christmas! I've not been this excited at Christmas since I was a child! It's beautiful and sitting proudly on my worktop, all red and shiny, beaconing me to bake, bake, bake.

With a bag of shop bought madeleines on every shopping list, tonight these light as a feather French cakes are on my hit list!

I've adapted the recipe to make mandarin flavoured ones.

So you will need:

4 eggs

pinch of salt

100g caster sugar

30g vanilla sugar

100g plain sieved flour

1 tsp baking powder

50g butter, melted

Zest of 1 small orange or mandarin

I bought a special madeleine mould for these, which will make 9 at a time, so time for some batch baking.

Pre-heat the oven to 210c.

In my beautiful KitchenAid and using a balloon whisk, whisk the eggs, sugar and vanilla until light fluffy and bubbly.

Mix the remaining dry ingredients in until you have smooth batter.

Grate the zest of 1 mandarin and mix in, I used mandarins (mainly because I just bought some fresh ones) because they have such a lovely fragrant zest.

Put the batter in the fridge for 1 hour, and as you bake in batches, keep the batter in the fridge. Keeping this batter chilled is very important and will give the little belly bump you get with madeleines.

I spooned in a tablespoon of batter in each mould, but if your moulds are smaller or bigger, don't fill to the top. I took out the oven grill shelf and put the mould on this before I filled the moulds, so the rubber wouldn't be all floppy as I put it the oven. Bake for 10 mins.

Now I'll be honest with you. These were my first attempt and after 5mins they had blown up so much I worried that 10mins would be too long, but trust me, put the timer on for 10mins and cook them for exactly 10mins, no less!

Cool on a rack and next!

This batch made 35 madeleines, and they are as light as a feather. I will freeze a batch and let you know how that goes, because these would be perfect for guests at a weekend breakfast.

Voila!