Bitter Chocolate Almond Madeleines

It was 2am, I had all the things in the house.

Bitter Chocolate Almond Madeleines

This recipe is somewhat of an original. After my previous disappointment with madeleines I started looking for other variations and came across a recipe for chocolate madeleines. This recipe initially appealed to me because it only involved folding things twice. I'm lazy and impatient, so I went for it. I altered it to add almond flavour and topping, and of course more chocolate. If these come across as too bitter, use 65g flour and 35g cocoa powder.

Ingredients:

100g butter, melted

2 eggs

100g caster sugar

60g plain flour

40g cocoa powder

3/4 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp almond extract

100g plain chocolate

Ground almonds

Instructions:

Beat the eggs and sugar together 5 minutes, until thick and light

Sift the dry ingredients twice, and fold in to the egg mixture

Fold in the melted butter and the almond extract

These pictures show the egg mixture, the butter being folded in and the finished batter

Leave in a cool place to firm up for 30 minutes

Preheat the oven to 200˚C

Fill each mould with a heaped teaspoon of the batter

As you can see, these are not evenly filled, and this is ok

Bake 7 minutes, until firm

They rose like they do in the pictures of people doing it right on the internet:

Let cool in pan 5 minutes and turn out onto a rack to cool completely

I don't have a rack, and this time I improvised with a grill pan. It worked fine

Melt the chocolate in a microwave in a heatproof bowl

Pour out some of the ground almond onto a plate and spread it into a low pile

Dip the surface of each madeleine in the melted chocolate, then roll across the ground almond, the almond will stick to the surface of the melted chocolate

Let cool completely to set the melted chocolate

It's ok if they don't all stand up nicely, they look fine apart from the one I dropped in the melted chocolate...

Enjoy with a sweet beverage

Or offload them to a friend and hope he eats and/or shares them or is at least kind enough to throw them out without telling you.