Nonettes de Dijon
Par Laurie le 23 novembre 2016, 18:04 - French pastry bites - Lien permanent
These are part of my first memories as a child. Back in the 70s, there were not that many cakes and cookies kids would be offered. Our four o'clock after school break was mostly made of bread, butter and chocolate or fruit and yoghurt and that was a great improvement if you compare it to the generation before us. There were some pastry bites that you would find in stores though – some traditional cakes or sometimes shortbread and our equivalent of graham crackers, but that's another story.
Anyway, my grandmother would sometimes buy those round shiny and moist honey cakes that were glazed and filled with orange marmalade. They came from Burgundy and the recipe dates back to the Middle Ages. When you bite into them, the cake crumbles a little and by the time you reach the center that’s filled with orange marmalade, your hands are sticky with honey and you give a care in the world if it’s cold and dreary outside!
Here’s my version of the original recipe. You might want to add more honey if you want the cake to be even puffier. My first attempt was so yummy, I left well enough alone but original recipes in old cookbooks list almost twice as much honey as I used!
For 6 muffins or 8 cupcakes:
1 cup flour, sifted
¼ cup white sugar
½ cup honey (original version/ I used only a little bit more than ¼)
a little less than ½ cup water
2 Tbsp butter
2 tsp baking powder
1 pinch cinnamon
1 pinch ginger
1 pinch ground cloves
1 pinch nutmeg
1 tsp and ½ for each muffin or 1 tsp for each cupcakes
Glaze
½ Tbsp lemon juice or rum (your choice!)
3 Tbsp confectioners’ sugar
Heat the sugar, honey, water and butter together in a saucepan. Once melted, remove from heat when it starts simmering.
Mix the flour with the spices and baking powder and pour the warm liquid on top then whisk until smooth. Let cool then leave in the fridge for an hour at least.
Oil muffin or cupcake molds. Pour the batter until they’re 2/3 full. Drop the orange marmalade in the center and push with the spoon so it sinks a little or completely into the batter. (I did not sink it completely and I very much like the fact it looked like there was a little crater on top of my cakes. If you want it like the original recipe, sink it completely and use muffin molds. The cake with not be round on top but flat.)
As you can see above, I also made tiny bites in very small cupcake molds. Perfect for tea time!
Bake 20 mn at 400°F. Glaze as soon as they’re out of the oven if you want them to remain a little sticky or wait until they’ve cooled if you want the glaze to look whiter.
For the glaze, just whisk together the two ingredients until smooth and let the glaze rest at least 15 mn in the fridge before you drizzle it on top of the muffins.
