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.
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.
