Take a classic madeleine recipe, switch out the lemon rind and lemon juice components for dayap rind and dayap juice instead, and voila! These were DELICIOUS, fragrant with the lime and lime zest, yet still those wonderful cakey yet crisp edged treats! I really like madeleines, and don’t bake them enough despite their being so incredibly easy to make…
They are beautiful to behold, and incredibly versatile… as a an afternoon snack with tea, with ice cream, dipped in chocolate, etc. This particular batch was taken out of the oven about 30-60 seconds too soon, so they lack a bit of that browned crust that I prefer, but otherwise, they tasted terrific.
Madeleines are sponge cakes baked in shell shaped pans, traditionally from the town of Commercy, France, some say the smooth side should have a pregnant “bump” rather than be flat. The pans are one of those “single-use” kitchen doodads, so not many people have them, but if you love madeleines, I strongly recommend have a couple of pans so you can make your own treats…
Once you get some slightly crisped edges, the cakes are almost done. Let them cool on a rack for a few minutes before turning them over and coaxing them out of the pans. Sprinkle with powdered sugar and serve freshly made. They won’t last more than a day or two without drying out…
I use this modified recipe from Martha Stewart that seems to work just fine:
3/4 cup unsalted butter, plus 2 tablespoons butter, both melted
1 1/2 cups sifted cake flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
3 large eggs plus two large egg yolks
3/4 cup granulated white sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon finely grated dayap zest
2 tablespoons dayap juice
Confectioner’s sugar for dusting
Pre-heat your oven to 350F. Butter your madeleine pans with two tablespoons of melted butter and set aside. Sift flour, baking powder and salt together and set aside. Put egg yolks, sugar, vanilla, dayap zest and dayap juice into a bowl and mix on medium high speed with an electric mixer until pale and slightly thickened. Add the melted butter and mix and fold in the flour with a spatula until just combined. Let this rest for 30 minutes (do not skip this step) and the batter will thicken. Pour batter carefully into the “shells” until roughly 3/4 full. You should be able to make 24 mini-cakes. Bake for roughly 8-9 minutes until the edges are just slightly golden brown and a little crisp… err on undercooking them rather than burning them. Unmold and sprinkle with confectioners sugar.
I just had one a day after baking, dunked in my hot tea, and while delicious, not quite the Proustian experience… :)
14 Responses
This is so good! We have a lot of dayaps in Nueva Ecija right now so I’ll be doing this. MM, you can also try making a buko sherbet with lychees and dayap zest in it! :-)
Anne, you may want to supply the market or encourage farmers in Nueva Ecija to supply dayap. I really love dayap. Was fortunate to have a friend bring me 7 pcs from Nueva Ecija so I made key lime pie. Had to squeeze them to the skin because I needed 1/2 a cup but ended up short. Unfortunately, my mom’s dayap were 30% bigger than the ones available, if any.
“No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through my whole body, and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me,”… “An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses…with no suggestion of its origin…
“Suddenly the memory revealed itself. The taste was of a little piece of madeleine which on Sunday mornings…my Aunt Leonie used to give me, dipping it first in her own cup of tea….Immediately the old gray house on the street, where her room was, rose up like a stage set…and the entire town, with its people and houses, gardens, church, and surroundings, taking shape and solidity, sprang into being from my cup of tea.”
–“The Remembrance of Things Past” — Marcel Proust
Foods that we consider as comfort food are foods that triggers strong childhood memories; we essential want to relive our childhood when it comes to our food preferences.
For Proust it’s madeleine, for me it’s my first taste of fatty, sticky, sweet ham at Christmas and the thick, cloudy, gelatinous, hot and sour “sinigang” of my lola.
More info here: https://www.hhmi.org/senses/d110.html
Thanks for the recipe MM!! :D
Isn’t it inapposite that Proust’s novel about involuntary memory (triggered by the madeleines dunked in tisane) was initially named in English for a phrase in Shakespeare’s sufficiently alliterative opening lines of Sonnet 30 about precisely the other kind of memory, “When to the sessions of sweet silent thought I summon up remembrance of things past,.” Thankfully, the direct and more accurate translation from French, In Search For Lost Time seems to be gaining acceptance in the more recent translations.
The Wikipedia entry for madeleine does not include the older and more fanciful origin that the cakes were linked to the pilgrims’ route to Santiago de Compostela which imagined that the famed cakes were originally baked on scallop shells giving it its distinct shape. The scallop shell, of course, (along with the gourd) being the emblems of the pilgrimage, that’s why the French call them coquille St. Jacques.
Footloose : Your mention of Sonnet 30 triggers a recollection of Sonnet 29 , this line in particular:
“Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope, / With what I most enjoy contented least;”
wishing I can connect the dots with the breadth and depth the way you do.
Nice to see you posting again.
Not a fan of pastry, but these sure look good! :D
Ayyy.. medio madali yata itong sundin… naku gagawin ko ito sa New Year.
well definitely try this MM…will have to look & buy those mold/pans muna…:)
Wish dayap were available here in the US. I always think of bringing some seeds but am afraid customs would somehow detect it! Dayap has a special essence that lime doesn’t.
Barajas, try key limes, not the bigger green limes in most groceries. Key limes are botanically the closest relative… they were apparently brought several hundred years ago from Malaysia or this part of the world… see my old posts on dayap for the discussion on this… :)
Your madeleines look absolutely perfect!
These look great, MM! I can almost smell and taste them … dayap and all … > Our dayap tree was already a plant when it came to us. I think it would be difficult to start with seeds.
I would really like to try this recipe but will need to hunt for the madeleine pans.
Been planning on purchasing star and Christmas tree-shaped pans and moulds. Hhhhmmm, I just might use the madeleine recipe and make Christmasy cakes. :-)
Wow! I just have to say this looks soooo good! :)