I recently bought a madeleine mould. Never had one but it’s not long before you give in and get one when you live in France. So I couldn’t wait to use it. Madeleines have always been a favourite of ours. You can’t really resist these pint sized cakes which can take any flavour you want to add to them. I thought of chocolate madeleines because it brings back warm memories of my 1-month course stint at the Dublin Cookery School. It’s been a year now since I did that course (how time flies!) and the first thing that both of us remember is the taste of lovely, crumbly chocolate madeleines that we were welcomed with when we went to have a look around before I decided on joining in. A plate of madeleines and hot cups of coffee later, I was truly and completely sold.

While I do have a recipe for chocolate madeleines from the school, I followed a different one this time round. Not entirely sure why I did that, I think I just wanted to see if other recipes are as good enough as the real deal. I found one at the BBC GoodFood website and tried it out. I think the main drawback with that recipe was the fact that it has no real chocolate in it, only cocoa powder which doesn’t leave you entirely satisfied. The madeleines also felt a bit dense and the texture was not as crumbly as desired.

So I decided to add some good old chocolate to this recipe and see how it turns out. I also replaced the plain flour with ‘cake flour’  or farine à gâteaux that you get readily here in the supermarket. The end result was what we were looking for the first time round – moist, light and crumbly, chocolatey madeleines with a crisp border. Just perfect.

Dark Chocolate Madeleines (adapted from the BBC GoodFood recipe found here)

Ingredients – Makes 12

80g plain flour or cake flour

20g ground almonds

1/2 tsp baking powder

2tbsp cocoa powder

75g castor sugar

2 eggs

a few drops of vanilla extract/essence

90g melted butter

75g melted dark chocolate – I used one with just over 50% cacao

Method

Sift the flour, ground almonds, baking powder and cocoa powder together. In a separate bowl, beat together the sugar and eggs, preferably with an electric whisk, until it’s pale and fluffy. Add the vanilla extract/essence. Fold through the flour mixture slowly in stages. Add in the melted butter and chocolate and mix everything together.

Cover the bowl with clingfilm and refrigerate for about half an hour.

Preheat the oven to 200C (conventional). Butter a 12-hole madeleine tin and dust it with some flour, shaking off any excess flour. Take the batter out of the fridge. Scoop tablespoonfuls of it and fill the holes of the tin.

Place the tin in the oven and bake for about 10 minutes or until the tops of the cakes are springy to the touch.

Once done, remove tin from oven, remove madeleines from the mould. Serve warm or cool sprinkled with cocoa powder or icing sugar.

These lovely little cakes are easy to put together, can carry any flavour and are ready in a jiffy – what more could you ask for!