Lime Madeleines

I was listening to Women's Hour yesterday, when I heard something about Proust and his madeleine moment that intrigued me. Nothing to do with madeleines looking like women's undercarriages, you understand, more about making them with buerre noisette, or 'nutted' butter. ie butter that has been cooked until golden brown before being used in a batter very similar to the tricky Genoise.

Lime Madeleine Recipe 
120g butter (melt and then allow to brown, set aside and cool a bit)
2 eggs
100g sugar (I used granulated)
60g flour (I used self-raising as that is all I had)
40g almonds (I ground them finely in small bowl of magimix with a dsst spn of the sugar for grinding powder)
Zest of a lime (you can use lemon, I didn't have one)

Put eggs and sugar in a bowl and whisk until frothy and pale yellow, ie like a pale rather slack meringue. Fold in very briskly but gently the flour and ground almonds, and then stir through the butter - making sure it is room temperature but not solidifying. When making a genoise, where you use normal melted butter, there is a danger it can split at this point, but I didn't have any problems.

 The guy on the radio suggested letting it sit for a bit, but as it was the most delicious cake batter I have ever tasked, I chose to cook them in batches of eight, using a non stick pan of my mother's.

Using a dessert spoon, I carefully filled the little shell shaped dimples in the pan.

Then bake at 190F for less than 10 minutes. Keep an eye on them as they cook fast. Turn out onto a cooling tray.

Then beat off your family with a bat. The nutty butter flavour was less pronounced in the cooked cake - but delicious. Floppy when carefully flipped out with a blunt knife, they quickly became crisp with a soft centre.

Found teenage son lurking with intent just now. There were 26.... no longer. Hope it fuels his A Level revision.

Tablecloth by www.annabelgrey.co.uk

Original story found here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/features/womans-hour/cooktheperfect/perfect/madeleines/