Earl Grey Madeleines

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We loved the Earl Grey Ice Cream we made in the past so much that we’ve been thinking about making an Earl Grey Cake of some sort. Doesn’t that sound delicious? Well, rather than a cake, we settled on a number of small cakes, and made Earl Grey Madeleines, instead.

This is nothing but a small play on the Madeleines that we’ve made in the past. Basically, we removed the lemon zest and replaced it with Earl Grey tea, so we won’t post the entire recipe, but we’ll show you how we added the flavor.

While we thought of adding Earl Grey tea directly to the madeleines, we didn’t like the idea of tea leaves in our little cakes. We couldn’t face little cakes with flecks in them, at least not if we could help it. So, we decided to infuse the flavor into the madeleines, just as if we were making tea. Better, right? But, if you look at the recipe, there’s really not much liquid in madeleines, just melted butter. Can you infuse flavor into melted butter?

Of course. But, there are a few tricks. And, they require a scale.

steeping tea in butter
Simply stir the leaves from a tea bag into the melted butter and let steep for 10 minutes.

First, measure the butter (132 g) into a saucepan and melt it over medium-low heat. When melted, add the leaves from 1 Earl Grey tea bag, stir to combine, and remove from the heat. Let steep for 10 minutes.

While the tea is steeping, measure the brown sugar (18 g or 1 tablespoon) and the honey (again, 18 g or 1 tablespoon) into a microwave-safe bowl. Weigh the bowl, sugar, honey, and all. Ours weighed 513 grams. Write down the number so you don’t forget it, and add 132 to that. In our case, it was 645 grams; that’s the amount it should all weigh once we include the butter, since we’re adding 132 grams of that.

straining butter
Strain out all the tea leaves by passing the butter through a piece of clean muslin. You’ll have to squeeze it through.
adding butter
Top up the butter, brown sugar, and honey mixture to the right amount, and you’re ready to go.

Strain the melted butter through a piece of butter muslin and into the bowl with the honey and brown sugar, squeezing through as much of the melted butter as possible. Weigh the bowl again. Note that you will not have added 132 grams of butter — some was absorbed into the cloth — so you need to add a bit more butter. How much? Simply add butter until you reach the amount of weight you calculated above.

Microwave and stir your butter until the brown sugar and honey melts. It won’t all mix into the butter, but that’s okay.

Now, proceed with the rest of the recipe, omitting the lemon zest — unless, of course, you like lemon in your tea — knowing your Earl Grey tea infused butter is ready to be added at the appropriate time.

As we expected, these were great little tea cakes, and not much harder to make than traditional madeleines, so five stars.

Worth the trouble?

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