Honey and Green Tea Madeleines - Recipe

The best madeleines I've had were from the Dominique Ansel Bakery in New York, where they're baked to order and served warm. Fortunately for us, the madeleine recipe is featured in the pastry chef's cookbook Dominique Ansel: The Secret Recipes. This version is adapted for a green tea flavour, and while Ansel flavours the madeleines with grated lemon and orange zests, I've left them out so they don't overwhelm the matcha (green tea powder). For the same reason, be sure to use a light, subtle-tasting honey.

Matcha - green tea powder - comes in different "grades". The type labelled for cooking or baking is a low grade - it's pale in colour and isn't very fresh. There's no need to buy tea-ceremony quality matcha - which is very expensive, and its subtleties would be lost when baked, anyway. But buy good-quality drinking matcha, which will have a vibrant green colour. Buy as small a pack as possible, and store it in an airtight container. What you don't use for this recipe can be whisked and drunk as green tea.

Make the batter the day before you want to use it, and let it rest in the fridge. This recipe makes about 100 small, bite-size madeleines, but there's no need to bake them all at once. Keep the batter in the fridge for up to a week and bake the madeleines as needed; they should be eaten fresh and warm.