I should coco! - Coconut and Lemon Curd Madeleines

View on Instagram

I’ll be honest, I’ve been slapping coconut oil on my face for as long as I can remember, and it is indeed as good a moisturiser and restorative as my previous moisturiser, if not better, which, when I discovered this, was brilliant and disappointing rolled into one. It's brilliant when I think on one hand of the money I now save by buying coconut oil and putting that on my dressing table instead of the (expensive) moisturiser that I had been sucked into buying by promises of eternal youth. My savings now go towards my not insubstantial collection of Kurt Geiger shoes, which is very pleasing, but the cloud that goes with this particular silver lining is my thinking of the copious amounts of money I had spent in the years gone by on 'posh' moisturiser which in turn led me to lament the ‘Kurt Geigers’ that could have been mine if I had been a bit more savvy. Life can be cruel.

But my recent discovery of cooking with coconut oil has been a revelation. A bit of reading around led me to discover that coconut oil had been the ‘go to’ oil for cooking and baking, before we discovered the horrors of hydrogenated, manufactured fats and indeed like many other naturally derived oils, coconut oil had long been a beauty/health staple too by those in the know. Win. Win. So, for no real logical explanation, I decided to celebrate my much improved knowledge by making madeleines.

Regular readers to this blog will know that I am a Francophile, pure and simple. That being the case, it is surprising that my madeleine pan, bought at Super U in a pretty Dordogne town one balmy summer when I was young, beautiful and carefree, before such pans were ever readily available here, has had about three airings in all the time I have owned it. Despite my lack of effort, madeleines are a cinch to make, as long as you are vigilant because like most ‘biscuity’ types, blink and they are burned.

Newly inspired, I decided to make coconut and lemon curd madeleines, which are loosely based on the idea of placing a dollop of something in the middle of the raw madeleine mix. I’d seen it done with Nutella, but with my coconut vibe, I thought that the sharp lemon tang would be a great foil to the mellow, nutty coconut. So, I set off to work, replacing the requisite amount of butter for VitaCoco coconut oil and adding about 50g of desiccated coconut, a pinch of salt and a teaspoon orange flower water (I was thinking citrus…) to a well-established madeleine recipe that I had cut out of a French cookery magazine in the dim and distant past. The result was, even though I say so myself, pretty damn good. It was a good thing that madeleines don’t really keep very well and need to be eaten within a few hours of baking. Marcel Proust used to dip his stale madeleines in his tea; Lola, Finn and Phill snaffled these before I had managed to put the kettle on. There can be no better recommendation in my mind.

And if you don’t like lemon curd, what about lime curd for a totally tropical vibe? Or a dollop of raspberry jam? Now, Coconut and raspberry: Let me just think about that for a moment. Or you could visit www.swearbyit.com for some more great recipes!

This recipe is an entry into the #swearbyit challenge with Vita Coco. Find more great coconut oil recipes and tips on using coconut oil at www.swearbyit.com

Coconut and Lemon Curd Madeleines

Makes approximately 18

Ingredients:

3 large eggs

130g caster sugar

1 tbsp honey

1tsp orange flower water (optional)

100g Vita Coco Coconut Oil, softened,( but cooled if you have melted it) plus a little more for greasing the tin.

50g desiccated coconut

150g plain flour

6g (a generous teaspoon) of dried yeast

A pinch of salt

About a quarter  to half of a jar of good quality lemon curd

Method:

Preheat the oven to 200c

Place the eggs and the sugar in a mixing bowl and beat until light and airy.

Add the honey and the orange flower water if using and mix well.

Add the coconut oil. If it is quite solid, mix it vigorously into the egg mixture until it disperses evenly.

Add the flour, the coconut, a pinch of salt and the yeast and mix until combined. Don’t overbeat. Personally I taste the mixture at this stage to see if I can discern the flavours, in this case, coconut. If it tastes a bit bland, add a little more salt, but be careful.

Grease the madeleine pan very well with the coconut oil. This is imperative as you want your madeleines to come out easily.

Place a heaped teaspoon of the mixture into each madeleine mould. Tap the pan down on the working top to encourage the mixture to settle into the mould.

Place a scant teaspoon of lemon curd onto the madeleine mixture.

Top the lemon curd with another generous teaspoon of the madeleine mixture. You may have to use the spoon to disperse the mixture evenly and it may all become a bit messy, but it will be okay.

Give the madeleines a final tap in the pan and then place them in the middle of the preheated oven. They might spread frighteningly and will look pretty awful initially but all will be fine. They should take about 8 – 10 minutes to bake and they should be a light golden brown with perhaps slightly browner ‘shell’ edges. Remove from the oven and when you can do so. If you have greased the pan well, the madeleines should come away from the moulds easily.

Trim the madeleines to their characteristic shell shape. It is likely that some of the mixture will have spread from the mould and therefore some trimming will be needed to neaten the madeleines up. I just think of all those sweet crispy bits and it pleases me enormously.

Eat warm, or whilst they are not quite cold. They will begin to become a little less light once they have been cold for a while, in which case, do what Proust did: make a pot of tea.

Lemon Layer Cake with added 'Star Quality'!

I always thought that being in your late thirties precluded you from having a birthday cake, not least because the amount of candles required would constitute a fire hazard, but in the eyes of Finn at least, having a birthday means that a birthday cake is necessary. A birthday isn't a birthday without cake. And I suppose he's right. So, the passing of Phill's birthday had to be marked with a cake and I opted for a version of the Magnolia Bakery lemon layer cake with lemon frosting and lemon curd. It has to be said we are partial to the odd lemon or two chez Lola and Finn.

I tweaked the recipe from the original by firstly using all plain flour instead of half self-raising flour, and added two and a half teaspoons of baking powder to ensure sufficient 'rise'. I think I would play safe though and use both types of flour if you have them. I did feel that I was taking a risk. I used the juice and rind of two lemons for lovely lemonliness, and instead of sandwiching the layers with frosting, I used lemon curd instead. And, yes, it was out of a jar...

I am a bit odd when it comes to frosting. I don't necessarily want something that is too tooth achingly sweet and so I left out two of the cups of icing sugar used to make the frosting. My advice to you would be to add icing sugar, beat it in sufficiently and then taste to see what you like. The recipe calls for eight cup measurements but six was more than enough for my palate at least. Add a splosh of milk when (or if) you think the icing is too thick, but be judicious. You want something that is slack enough to spread but with enough consistency to stay put where you need it to stay put. Not unsurprisingly, I upped the lemon content. I added the juice and rind of one lemon to the icing mixture and it was glorious.

The stars? Well. Not compulsory obviously. But I had yellow sugar paste and it seemed like a good idea at the time....

Lemon Layer Cake adapted from the Magnolia Bakery Cookbook

Ingredients:

(Note: American recipe so uses cup measurements. They're brilliantly easy!)

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened

2 cups caster sugar

4 large eggs, at room temperature.

1-1/2 cup self-raising flour

1-1/4 cup plain flour

3/4 cup milk

Juice and zest of two average size lemons

For the frosting:

1 cup of butter at room temperature

6 cups of icing sugar

juice and rind of one average sized lemon

A splosh of milk (where necessary)

To join the layers:

Half a jar of good quality lemon curd.

Method:

Preheat oven to 350F.

Grease and lightly flour three 9"x2" round cake tins; line the bottoms with waxed or parchment paper.

In a large bowl, on the medium speed of an electric mixer, cream the butter until smooth. Add the sugar gradually and beat until fluffy, about 3 minutes.

Add the eggs one at a time, beating the mixture well after each egg is added.

Combine the flours and add in four parts, alternating with the milk and the lemon juice and zest, beating well after each addition. I always try to end with the flour and mix the last of the flour in by hand to try to prevent overworking the flour.

Divide the cake batter among the cake pans.

Bake for 20-25 minutes or until a cake tester inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean.

Let cakes cool in pans for 10 minutes.

  

Remove from pans and cool completely on wire rack.

In the meantime, make the frosting. Beat the butter with an electric mixture to loosed the butter up a little, then add a cup of icing sugar, beating thoroughly after each cupful. Initially the mixture will be very dry and you may need to add the odd splosh of milk to loosen the mixture to allow more icing sugar to be added. Once you are happy with the taste of the icing, add the juice and rind and beat the mixture thoroughly until the icing is light, fluffy and holding its shape.

When the layers have cooled, spread the lemon curd evenly between the layers and then spread the frosting over the top and the sides of the cake. Decorate as desired