On this Easter Sunday in Paris, I’ve just made a batch of lemon madeleines which have an unusual ingredient in them: olive oil.  There’s not a gram of butter in this recipe, nor have I used white flower…sorry, that’s flour.  I also cut down on the granulated sugar.  A madeleine pan is required because madeleine molds are very shallow and give the little cakes the signature ribbed effect.  But if you must improvise (until you run out and buy your madeleine pan), then I suppose you could use a muffin tin and only fill up the cases a third of the way.  But then they wouldn’t be madeleines; they’d be mini-muffins pretending to be madeleines.

Here’s the recipe which uses metric units –

3 eggs, 200 grams of white granulated sugar (I used 170 grams), 3 lemons and 10 cl (or 100 ml) of olive oil.
250 grams of white flour (I used whole-wheat flour which is why these madeleines are brown. You could use all-white flour or mix half and half), half a small sachet of yeast (levure chimique) or 1/2 teaspoon of baking powder.

Preheat oven to 150°C.
Whisk the eggs with the sugar in a bowl.
Finely grate an entire lemon (washed).
Into the bowl add 10 cl of lemon juice, the grated lemon zest, and the olive oil. Add the flour, the yeast or baking powder and blend well.

Grease a madeleine tin with olive or sunflower oil (or butter) and fill each case with the batter.  Slide into a heated oven for 12-15 minutes being careful not to overcook otherwise they’ll be dry and hard.  When the bottoms start to look faintly browned, they’re done. 

Delicious with tea, cider, sparkling white dessert wine.  Or coffee.

Variations – in the past, I’ve made pistachio madeleines which were divine.  Also almond honey and almond lemon.