MANDARIN & HONEY MADELEINES

Makes 12

100g unsalted butter

3 tbsp strong-flavoured runny honey 200g (11/3 cups) plain flour

1 tsp baking powder

75g caster sugar

2 eggs

30ml full-fat milk

Finely grated zest of 1 well-washed

mandarin (or 1 lemon or ½ orange) Icing sugar, for dusting

1 Melt butter (keep 1 tbsp for greasing tin later) in a saucepan over medium-high heat. Let it bubble until showing signs of turning brown, then remove from heat. The residual heat should take butter to just the right side of nut-brown. Stir in honey.

2 Sift flour into a large mixing bowl, then stir in baking powder and sugar. In a small bowl, whisk together eggs and milk; add to flour mixture. Mix until it’s a thick batter without any clumps of flour and pour in warm melted butter and honey. Add a dash more milk if mixture seems too thick. Mix in mandarin zest, then chill batter in fridge: a few hours is good, overnight is even better.

3 When almost ready to bake – preheat oven to 200˚C (180˚C fan) – melt reserved butter and use a pastry brush to well grease a 12-berth classic madeleine tin or pattypan tin with hemispherical cups. Include a decent perimeter around each depression to cater for any overflowing batter.

4 Using a spoon (or a disposable piping bag containing the batter, with the corner snipped off), drop the madeleine mix into the shells until each is three-quarters full. Bake cakes 6-10 mins, depending on their size, until they’re a golden colour with crispy-looking edges. Remove from oven, turn over to show the pretty corrugated side and dust with icing sugar.