Elsa has discovered my secret.
My dear friend Elsa and I were hanging out quite a bit when she finally got back from her worldly travels this summer, as she was job hunting, so had her days free, just like I do. She came over one afternoon, and we decided to bake something. I started looking for recipes, and suggested rosemary shortbread, thyme/sea salt/chocolate chunk cookies, or these earl grey madeleines from Baking a Moment. She looked at me and said “Are we only allowed to make things that involve weird flavor combinations?”
She’s right. I like trying new flavor combinations. Why have chocolate chip cookies when you can add thyme? Or plain shortbread when you can add rosemary? Why not spice it up a bit? Plus, combinations like this are becoming rather mainstream. I think I’ve got her on the weird flavor combo train at this point, but she still teases me all the time. Anyway, on that afternoon, I convinced her to make earl grey madeleines with me. And dang, were they good.
For the record, Elsa made me zucchini, jalapeno, lime cookies for my birthday.
Earl Grey Madeleines
Ingredients
6 Tbl unsalted butter
3 bags earl grey tea
2 tsp light brown sugar
2 tsp honey
2 eggs
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp kosher salt
Instructions
Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
In a small pot on the stove, melt the butter. While the butter is melting, cut open the tea bags, and then stir the loose tea into the melted butter. Allow to steep over low heat for about 5 minutes, then remove from the heat and allow it to steep for another 5 minutes. Strain the tea butter. I used a mesh sieve that I overlayed with the tea bags (which I had cut to make sheets). If you have cheesecloth, you can use that.
Stir the brown sugar and honey into the tea butter. They may stay kind of separated, and you can slightly reheat to try to combine them better. Ours wouldn’t really combine no matter how much we reheated them, and everything worked out just fine. So don’t stress about it.
Here’s another weird step. In a (preferably metal) mixing bowl, combine the eggs and granulated sugar. Fill another bowl with very hot water, and put the bowl of eggs/sugar into the bowl of hot water. Mix this with your fingers (I know, I know) until the eggs feel slightly warm and the sugar has dissolved and is no longer grainy. When you’ve reached that point, you can remove the bowl from the water and whip the eggs/sugar on high until it has tripled in volume.
In another bowl (I know, it’s a bowl heavy recipe), sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt. Gently fold the egg mixture in in two additions. Pour a little bit of this batter into the tea butter, stir it up, and then pour the tea butter into the batter. Again, gently fold until thoroughly combined.
Spoon the batter into a buttered and floured madeleine pan. You only need to fill up the molds about 2/3 of the way. Bake for 8-10 minutes, or until they’re golden-brown around the edges. Remove the madeleines from the pan immediately and allow them to cool on a wire rack. Enjoy with a glass of milk, a nice coffee, or tea!
