Brown Butter Madeleines; dainty little cakes made in a traditional French way to ensure fluffiness, butteriness, and that distinctive shell shape.

Breakfasts in our house almost exclusively revolve around tiny cakes.

While I will endlessly enjoy a deep bowl of steaming porridge, or crunching through piles of cereal, wee baked things are a growing obsession.

Mornings used to involve a 15-20 minute commute to my workplace. A minor but strenuous uphill walk that required mental and physical energy to tackle before a 9+ hour workday. However, as the past year has shortened said commute to walking three steps into another room in our flat, the subsequent requirement for large portions complex carbohydrates has somewhat diminished.

Rather than filling myself to the brim and trudging through the many long hour until lunch time, mornings are now much more joyful when filled with petite treats. Self care in the form of a sweet, buttery mouthful or two with the day’s first mug of coffee.

Have you seen our festive Sparkling Spiced Orange Madeleines?

Alongside this evolution of breakfasting habits has come the endeavour into new baking techniques. Waxing and waning lockdown restrictions have plunged me into a project of actually learning the classic French patisserie techniques I’ve been vowing to learn for years. With the help of Le Cordon Bleu’s Pastry book and the smudged camera of my iPhone 8, I’ve been filming a series in which I teach myself to become a pastry chef.

So far in the series we’ve tackled the fiddly world of chocolate, and the dangers of confectionery. Next comes the challenge of dainty bakes such as madeleines, financiers, and muffins. The Brown Butter Madeleines you see before you are a twist on the prescribed recipe for madeleines in the book. They have obviously been tweaked to suit Maverick Baking readers’ palates (love you guys) and to add a more remarkable flavour to them. Today’s twisted recipe for Brown Butter Madeleines swaps out one of the eggs just for the yolk, for extra golden colour. It uses salted butter, something I rely on on a daily basis to ensure baked goods are actually well-seasoned. Yes lads, season your desserts too.

The recipe also makes use of internet-famous brown butter, or burnt butter. This has long been a favourite technique of chefs, in sweet or savoury cooking, to add flavour to the butter itself and to anything it touches. All you need to do is pop your butter into a pan, ideally a silver one so you get a better view of the colour, and gently melt and simmer it until it turns chestnut brown. You can then use the butter immediately, such as in today’s recipe, or you can set it and save it for extra-delicious uses in everyday cooking and baking.

Mostly, this recipe for Brown Butter Madeleines just involves the measuring of some ingredients you probably already have in your kitchen. It’s incredible what normal every day things can become with a bit of care. The only real essential piece of kit you’ll need to make the recipe is a madeleine tin. This is a metal or silicone tray with shallow shell-shaped hollows, allowing you to get that iconic madeleine shape. (This is the one I use). While you may not use this kind of equipment every day, it’s nicely affordable and is the perfect gateway to elegant teatime treats.

If you’ve never tried baking or eating madeleines before, I hope this recipe will give you the best of both experiences. Biting into the just-crisp golden exterior of these little beauties while still warm is magnificent. The beautifully fluffy interior shows off all the flecks of brown butter and carries a gorgeously yellow crumb. A couple of these Brown Butter Madeleines with a tea or coffee on a cold day is pretty hard to beat. Like a tiny taste of Paris while you can’t actually travel to Paris, eh?

Want to save these Brown Butter Madeleines for later? You can pin the image below.

To make these Brown Butter Madeleines, simply follow the recipe below!