Sunday Tea Cakes

Happy Family Day weekend to everybody here in Canada... Presidents' Day for my US readers... And a happy start of the Half-Term holiday of which I am the most jealous of, to all of my UK friends and family :-D

However jealous of a full week off work I am, I am still very excited to have my long weekend!  So far we have enjoyed pasta and truffle making (another post coming soon...) and my first time out cross country skiing and tubing - wow, so much fun but I definitely fear for sore limbs some time soon...  Still to come, brunch on Family Day and some general chilling out enjoying the extra day to the weekend!

After returning back from our outside adventures yesterday, I tried out our tea cake plaque pan we bought a good few months ago from Williams Sonoma (thank you wedding gift cards once again!) and hadn't tried yet!

With a church luncheon today it was a perfect opportunity to try it.  They are such pretty designs, little bite sized cakes that would make a great platter to take with us.

To create this recipe I investigated how this tea cake plaque pan worked and read a few contradictory reviews - some saying you needed to grease the pan, some that said you didn't, some people who liked the recipe that came with the pan, others had complaints... Hmm, what to do then!?

In the end I found a recipe for Apple Madeleines I changed up to be lemon - my flavour of choice in everything I do!  ... I also included a glaze on top of the cakes for extra juiciness.  

We may have tasted a couple last night, but the rest are out on the sweet table, right about now... 

Here's the recipe I used and what you'll need (thanks Good Housekeeping Cakes and Bakes recipe book):

For the Madeleines

150g unsalted butter, melted and cooled, plus extra to grease (I actually sprayed with cooking spray and added a sprinkling of flour as the recipe that came with the pan suggested this)

2 tbsp honey, added to the butter after melting

3 large eggs

150g caster sugar (I used granulated as caster is hard to find here, and it was fine...or should I say superfine?!)

150g plain flour, sifted

1/2 tsp baking powder

Grated zest of 1 lemon

For the Glaze (not from the original recipe)

3 rounded tbsp icing sugar

Juice of 1 lemon

Directions

1.  Preheat oven to 200°C (392°F).  Grease the madeleine tins or in my case, the tea cake pan.

2.  Beat the eggs and caster sugar together until pale and thick (this should take about 8 minutes).  I used our Kitchen Aid stand mixer mostly on speed 2 for 7 minutes and 1 extra minute on speed 4 and it had become pale and thick as it suggested :-)

3.  Quickly, but gently fold in the flour, baking powder and lemon zest, followed by the melted butter and honey mixture, making sure the butter doesn't settle at the bottom of the bowl.

4.  Spoon the mixture into the tins.  Bake for 8 - 10 minutes until golden then remove from the tins and cool on a wire rack.

5.  Store in an airtight container for up to 2 days. 

6.  Prepare the glaze while the cakes are cooking so that you can pour onto the cakes while warm - whisk together the icing sugar and lemon juice until all of the sugar and any lumps have dissolved.  Spoon or pour over cakes while warm.

A recent investment brought me to the OXO Good Grips cookie scoop, something I thought I would never need until the addition of a mini muffin tin to my collection.  So I bought one and it has already proved very helpful! For this cake pan, it was suggested on the recipe that came with the pan that 2 teaspoons of batter would be a good amount, and hey guess what - the cookie scoop was 2 teaspoons, yey!  This made this much easier to get even portions in each mini cake :-)

We got our pan from Williams Sonoma but we've also seen them at Home Outfitters!!  The cakes popped out SO easily although the pan was very very hot (coming out of a 390°F oven, I guess that goes without saying however!).

I LOVE how cute they look, and it could make for a really easy 30 mini cake quick batch to whip up, perhaps with a little sprinkling of icing sugar on top?

Have a great long weekend everyone, thanks for reading!