Honey Chocolate Madeleines

My first bake off my list from my recipe book post.

I recently treated myself to a mini madeleine mould from Lakeland, so when looking for a recipe to make for this months we should cocoa, honey chocolate madeleines won hands down.

My new silicone mould

We should cocoa is a monthly chocolate challenge from Chocolate Log Blog and a guest host, this month Lancashire food.  Each month has a theme and January's is 'New Ingredient', the idea being to use an ingredient you have not previously combined with chocolate.

As much as I love honey and chocolate, I've never put the two together before, so this seemed like the perfect opportunity!

The recipe is taken from a fair trade chocolate recipe book: Divine - Heavenly Chocolate Recipes with a heart, by Linda Collister.

I've never made madeleine's before, so I wasn't quite sure how it would go, or to be honest entirely sure what they should be like!


The first part of the recipe calls for whisking the eggs sugar and honey together easy - except my mixer has recently broken, so I was resigned to whisking by hand.  It took a very long time, and I found it very tiring (although at 38 weeks pregnant I tire easily these days).  To be honest I'm not entirely sure I whisked enough, but I had definitely had enough!

Mixture is supposed to be pale (check) thick (sort of) and leave a ribbon trail when lifting whisk (not really)

The recipe says it will make 16 madeleines but given mine were mini it actually made two trays worth (48 bite size pieces), although I think I may have slightly under-filled the first batch.

They taste very nice but not very strongly of honey.  The book does say to choose a well flavoured honey, which I thought I had, but it doesn't come through very well.

What I was most disappointed with was the shapes, the pattern from the mould didn't show up as clearly as I had expected on the cakes, and having under-filled the first batch I think I over compensated on the second so neither were particularly well shaped.

Those from the second batch also had a large number of air bubbles in them, I'm not sure if this may be because the mixture sat while the first batch baked.

First batch shown on the right, second on the left

They looked slightly better once cooled and dusted, but still disappointing in shape.

I would make them again, they are very tasty and dangerously morish, but would want to experiment with the mould.  Use a regular size one, rather than mini, and try a metal one rather than silicone to see if either gave a more defined shape and pattern.