Madeleines

Madeleines are shelled-shaped cakes. They’re made with a genoise batter but they’re not baked in conventional cake tins. They use a custom pan that has a shallow imprint.

One of the primary goals is to get a prominent rise and resulting hump.

A lot of the information I’m going to distill is from Baking Like a Chef.

Ingredients

Although this is a cake batter, there are considerations to make for this bake.

Leavening Agent

Traditionally leavening was done with traditional cake methods, such as creaming butter and sugar or whipping egg whites. In modern times, this is now handled by the use of baking powder. Or at least most recipes use baking powder to guarantee sufficient rise.

Aim for 5% of flour, by weight.

Butter

Traditionally the cakes were dry. They used a ratio of 50% to flour. Increasing the ratio of butter is how to make the cake moist. Modern recipes use 100% ratio.

Butter is also used for flavouring. The flavour is very pronounced, so use your fanciest butter here.

Flavouring

Use vanilla extract for flavouring. If you’re feeling fancy, you can also use vanilla beans. Like butter, the flavour comes through strong so use whatever you can taste.

For flavoured choices, use citrus zest of lemon or orange.

Getting the Bump

Madeleine Pan

A madeleine baking pan is unitasker. A pan with a deep cavity will allow more batter to be filled into the center. The increase in batter volume will allow for more vertical rise (akin to muffin tins).

Thermal Differential

A cold pan and batter into a hot oven will promote the rise. This is because it takes longer for the outside crust to set, giving more time for baking powder to react and expand. This is similar to recommendation to chill cookie batter before baking, to decrease spread.

Once in the oven, you can reduce the temperature to avoid burning the crust before the bake has set. Start in 425 F (225 C) oven and drop to 350 F (175 C).

Resting Overnight

Resting the batter overnight will give time for the flour to fully hydrate. This will ensure a better rise by allowing some gluten to form and relax, as well as enzyme to do work for flavour development. The gluten will support more of the rise.

Summary

The difference between madeleines and sponge cakes is the different end goals. We want a prominent bump and rise and we do as many of these techniques as possible to ensure that outcome. For a sponge cake, we sometimes want to minimize the doming and maintain a tight and fine crumb structure.

This makes sense, as the two bakes are eaten in different applications. Madeleines are eaten with tea or coffee and the fluffy open texture can be a good aspect. Cakes are need a consistent and tight crumb, which allows for stacking and frosting or hosting spreads or fillings.