Orange French Madeleines

About three weeks ago, I made French madeleines for the second time. Due to lockdowns and the Covid-19 situation, I hadn’t seen my family for 7 months, so I was really looking forward to our trip to Surrey to see them again. Living in Wales, I don’t get to see my family very often at the best of times, so I wanted to bake something nice to take with me. I really enjoyed making French madeleines the first time I tried, so I decided to change the recipe slightly and make orange French madeleines. I followed Mary Berry’s recipe on page 151 of her book 100 Cakes and Bakes, but instead of lemon zest, I added orange zest.

The bake was pretty straightforward. The recipe is supposed to make 30 madeleines but I only got 23.5 out of it, so maybe my tin has bigger moulds than Mary’s?!? I put both batches in for 9 minutes and both came out with nice bumps, although the second batch had a nicer colour (why, I do not know!). This time I let Will try one straight from the oven (good wife points) with some icing sugar on top – they are so nice fresh! Flavour-wise I was a bit disappointed, as the orange zest was not very prominent. The lemon zest madeleines were really tangy, but other than a mild citrus flavour, you didn’t get the same flavour intensity from the orange zest. But overall, they were really tasty!