Orange Blossom and Cardamom flavored Madeleines

These french cookies have been on my to-do list for a couple of years. I wonder why I never got to making them. About a year ago, I even went and purchased the madeleine mold from a store - and it was lying there in my basement along with all my other baking accessories. 

They are so easy to make - they look so cute - and they are delicious to taste. It is a cookie but has the texture of a cake. These are just amazing.

I had just got this bottle of orange blossom water and wanted to use it. Orange Blossom water is used a lot in Lebanese/Arabic cooking. Mind you - it does not have a citrus aroma, it is more flowery. Just as the name says, it is orange blossom water. But, the smell is divine. Ofcorse, the best thing to combine with it was crushed cardamom and that how this flavor came up.

The Madeleine Mold

Ingredients

2/3 cup sugar

2/3 cup butter (melted and cooled)

3 large eggs  at room temperature

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

2 teaspoons orange blossom water

1 teaspoon crushed cardamom

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 cup all-purpose flour, sifted

powdered sugar, for garnish.

Method

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit

Sieve/Sift together the flour and baking powder into a bowl and keep aside.

In a mixing bowl, add the sugar and eggs and mix well with an electric mixer till its nice and thick like a sauce. Add the orange blossom water, salt and cardamom powder and mix well. Now add the cooled melted butter and flour and baking powder mixture and fold it gently into the wet mixture until fully incorporated.

Refrigerate this mixture for atleast an hour. Very important step to get the famous hump on a Madeleine.

Grease and dust a madeleine pan. Add the batter to the prepared pan - 1 tablespoon into one well (I used a standard madeleine mold). Bake 12-14 minutes or until lightly golden around the edges. 

Remove from oven and cool in the mold for 5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely and dust some powdered sugar for garnish.

I got almost 30 madeleines from this batter - since I have a mold that makes 12 madeleines at a time - I had to use it 3 times.

Torcettini di Saint Vincent (Sugar Crusted Twisted Cookies from the Valle d’Aosta) - We Knead to Bake # 4

Month No. 4 for 'We Knead to Bake' - I am loving this project. I always loved baking breads and cakes and cookies too. However, never actually tried or even knew of so many different varieties out there. This project has made me love bread baking all the more and the beauty is I get to learn new recipes.

This month Aparna who pens at My Diverse Kitchen had us bake a yeasty cookie. It has this beautiful knotty shape and that sugar on top. Its a yummy crunchy on the outside and soft and airy on the inside kinda cookie that can be dunked in tea, coffee or even dessert wine (yes, we tried it with some yummy blueberry wine) 

Torcettini are smaller versions of Torcetti (meaning small twists), and these pear/ teardrop shaped twists are made of a dough of flour, yeast and butter which are shaped and then rolled in sugar before being baked. These biscuits are synonymous with the town of Saint Vincent in Valle d'Aosta, a small mountainous region in North-Western Italy, even though they’re well known throughout the Piedmont region as well.

The origin of these biscuits is believed to be from Grissini (breadsticks) which were made from the leftover scraps of bread dough. According to one story, a Grissini baker had some leftover butter which he needed to use up. Inspiration struck and he decided to add the butter to the last batch of his Grissini dough for the day. To be able to differentiate this lot of “breadsticks”, he rolled them in sugar and shaped them into loops, and the Torcetti was born. Torcetti/ Torchettini taste even better when they’re flavoured with lime/ lemon zest or anise.

These biscuits are crunchy, not very sweet and pair very well with cold milk, hot chocolate, tea/ coffee or wine. They are delicious served warm and equally good cold, and keep very well if stored in airtight containers. Apparently, Queen Margaret, the wife of King Umberto I of Savoy loved these biscuits so much during her stay in Valle d'Aosta, that she gave her servants enough provisions to bake an abundant supply for her consumption.

Recipe adapted from A Baker's Tour by Nick Malgieri

Ingredients

1/2 cup warm water, about 110F

1 1/4 tsp active dry yeast (or 1 tsp instant yeast)

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

2 tbsp cocoa powder (if making chocolate torcettini)

1/4 tsp salt

1 tsp lime/ lemon zest (replace with orange zest for the chocolate version)

40 gms (3 and 1/2 tablespoons) unsalted butter, cold and cut into small pieces

1/3 cup sugar for rolling the cookies

Method

Dissolve the yeast in the warm water, in a small bowl and keep aside.

Put the flour and the salt in the food processor bowl (or a largish regular bowl if kneading by hand) and pulse a couple of times to mix. Add the butter pieces and pulse until the butter is well mixed and the flour-butter mixture looks powdery.

If making chocolate Torcettini, remove 2 tbsp all-purpose flour and add the 2 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder mentioned in the recipe. Don’t add the lemon zest/ anise. Use orange zest and maybe add 1/ 2 tsp instant coffee powder with the flour.

Add the yeast-water mixture and pulse till it all comes together as a ball. Do not over process or knead. Place the ball of dough in a oiled bowl, turning it so it is well coated with the oil. Cover the bowl, and let the dough rise quite a bit. 

This dough does not really double in volume, but it should look “puffy” after about an hour or so. When you pinch off a bit from the top you can see the interior looking a bit like honeycomb. Press down the dough and deflate it, wrap it in cling warp and refrigerate it for at least one hour or up to 24 hours. 

When ready to make the cookies, take the dough out and lightly roll it out into an approximately 6” square. If the dough feels sticky, scatter a little sugar on it. Using a pizza wheel cut the dough into four strips of equal width. Cut each strip into 6 equal pieces, by cutting across, making a total of 24 pieces. The measurements are not very critical in this part because this just makes it easier to have 24 equal sized bits of dough, as compared to pinching of bits of the dough.

Roll each piece into a pencil thick “rope” about 5” long. Sprinkle a little sugar on your work surface and roll the “rope” in it so the sugar crusts the dough uniformly. Form the “rope” into a loop crossing it over before the ends.

Place the Torcettini on parchment lined baking sheets, leaving 1 1/2" between them. Leave them for about 20 minutes or so till they rise/ puff up slightly. Don’t worry, they will not “puff up” much.

Bake them at 160C (325F) for about 25 minutes till they’re a nice golden brown. Cool the cookies completely, on a rack. Store them in an air-tight container at room temperature. This recipe makes 24 to 30  biscuits.