St John's Madeleines

St John is one of my absolute favourite restaurants. I've been obsessed with Fergus Henderson ever since I saw him cooking with Anthony Bourdain on Mind of a Chef in 2012. These Madeleines are so light and fluffy, usually scoffed at the end of a meal in Smithfield with a digestif. This recipe makes 24 madeleines.

Ingredients

• 135g salted butter
• 15g soft light brown sugar
• 110g caster sugar
• 135g self-raising flour
• 3 large eggs
• 30ml honey
• 10g butter for greasing
• 10g flour for dusting

Method

1. Melt the butter and honey in a saucepan and leave to cool
2. Whish the eggs, caster and brown sugar together for 10 minutes until the mixture has tripled in size
3. Fold in the flour and butter to the rest of the batter mixture
4. Decant into a piping bag and leave in the fridge for at least 3 hours
5. Heat the oven to 180°C
6. Grease the madeleine tin with butter, then dust them with flour. Shake off any excess
7. Pipe a dessert spoon sized blob of the batter into each mould (be careful not to add too much otherwise it will spill over when baking)
8. Bake for 12-14 minutes until golden brown
9. Turn out onto a cooling rack for a minute then eat immediately!

Notes

You will never make enough of these and you will always want more.

Inspiration

Kitchen Exile originally published the recipe for these back in 2021.