Do we have any bakers out there?

[thewayne]

I love Madelines. I used to always buy them at Trader Joe's in Phoenix, but they stopped carrying them. A woman there suggested I buy them in bulk at World Market, but I (A) don't want larger madelines, and (II) don't want them in bulk.

So I bought a gorgeous medeline pan from Williams-Sonoma. I found a great recipe from Food Network, and it works quite well for full batches. But a full batch is 40some small cakes, far too many for my wife and I, so last weekend I halved the recipe.

And it failed.

Here's the full recipe, in short:
4 large eggs
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 teaspoon unsalted butter, at room temperature plus 1/4 pound (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted and slightly cooled
2 teaspoons plus 1 cup bleached all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 tablespoon orange zest, finely minced

I used a lemon instead of an orange for the zest, but since I'm just grating the rind for the skin and oil, I don't think that would make a significant difference.

The failure was that instead of getting a nice soft small cake, the cakes fell and I ended up with crisps. They still tasted quite good. My wife noticed one difference: larger bubbles in the crisps than you'd see in a proper madeline. She thinks that half a teaspoon of baking powder was too much and that with the lower mass of the mix itself, that I should try a third or quarter teaspoon. I was leaning towards half a teaspoon was too little and I should use two thirds, though I'm leaning towards her observation. Unfortunately I won't be doing any baking today, maybe some evening next week or on to next weekend.

I was wondering if any experienced bakers out there might have an observation?

Comments

[porsupah.livejournal.com]

I'd say this calls for application of the scientific method. ^_^ Perhaps keep it to two variables: amount of baking powder (direct ratio, a bit more, and a bit less), and lemon or orange zest.

I wonder if you could do without the baking powder, and subject the mix to high vacuum instead? Although, you might not have such a pump handy.

Maybe I'll see if jharish can shed some light on the matter - he's been known to get up to some sophisticated baking shenanigans, though I've admittedly yet to taste proof. =:)

[wuglet.livejournal.com]

So this is my gut-feeling plus some experience with meddling with baking recipes. Baking is all about the relations/ratios, but it is not that mathematical that you can just halve stuff. Usually it works better to halve the dry ingredients and eggs, but use about 3/4 of the wet ingredients.

So in this recipe, I would try 2 eggs and half of the flour, sugar, and zest, but leave the 1 teaspoon of unsalted butter, vanilla extract, and baking powder whole. The 1/4 pound of butter should go to somewhat more than 1/8. I'm better in the metric system, so if 1/4 pound is 125gr, I'd try the reduced recipe with 80gr instead of the 60-odd grammes.

The type of zest shouldn't make a difference, both lemon and orange have more or less the same oils. ;)


PS: The large bubbles indicate that you over-mixed the batter; it shouldn't be soupy-smooth but rather smooth with some texture left.

http://www.joyofbaking.com/madeleines.html