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Madeleine Au Cafe
Break four fresh eggs in a copper basin, add four ounces sugar and sharply beat up with a whisk for fifteen minutes; then add four ounces sifted flour with three tablespoons very strong-made coffee, gently mix with a skimmer for one minute; then add three ounces melted butter and a saltspoon baking powder; gently mix again for half minute, then pour into a lightly buttered pastry tin and set in a moderate oven to bake for twenty minutes. Remove from the oven, cut the madeleine into six equal pieces, sprinkle a little powdered sugar over and serve.
This is a coffee-flavoured genoise baked in a single tin and cut into portions, not the shell-shaped little cakes the name usually calls to mind. Everything depends on the air you beat into the eggs, since the baking powder here is only insurance.
- The hinge: beat to the ribbonFifteen minutes with a hand whisk is what it takes to get four eggs and sugar to full ribbon stage; in a stand mixer with the whisk, allow 5 to 8 minutes on high until the batter falls in a thick trailing band that holds its shape for a few seconds. Warming the bowl slightly over hot water first gets you there faster and gives more volume, though the recipe does not call for it.
- Copper basinCopper bowls were standard equipment in French kitchens, and copper is known to react with egg white in a way that helps stabilise a foam. A stainless or glass bowl works; a pinch of cream of tartar with the sugar will also help stabilise the eggs.
- "Gently mix with a skimmer"The skimmer is a flat perforated scoop, and the action meant is folding, not stirring. Use a large spatula and cut down through the centre, sweep along the bottom and lift, turning the bowl; stop the moment the flour disappears.
- Moderate oven350F (175C). Twenty minutes suits a shallow tin; the cake is done when the top springs back and the edges just begin to pull from the sides.
- Weights and small measuresFour ounces sugar is a generous half cup, four ounces flour a scant cup, three ounces butter six tablespoons. A saltspoon is about a quarter teaspoon.
- The coffee"Very strong-made" means a concentrated brew. Three tablespoons of espresso or of coffee brewed at double strength, cooled to room temperature, keeps the flavour without slackening the foam.
- Folding in the butterMelted butter is heavy and will collapse the batter if it is dumped in hot. Cool it to barely warm, drizzle it around the edge of the bowl, and fold in with as few strokes as will do.
- Tin and yieldAn 8-inch square or 9-inch round tin gives the right depth for twenty minutes; the recipe asks only that it be lightly buttered. Six pieces as directed; the cake is best the day it is baked.
The madeleine's name is generally traced to a cook called Madeleine said to have made them in Lorraine, a story repeated in French cookbooks for well over a century without documentary support. The word had loosened considerably in professional kitchens: it covered the shell-moulded cakes of Commercy but also, as here, any light butter-and-egg sponge in the same family, baked in whatever tin was to hand and cut for service. The method is straight genoise practice from the French restaurant tradition that shaped so many American hotel kitchens -- eggs and sugar whipped to carry the whole rise, flour and butter folded in at the last moment. The addition of a saltspoon of baking powder is the tell of an era in transition, when chemical leaveners were cheap and reliable enough that even a classically trained chef would hedge his sponge with a little.