Madeleines (Page 686)

RECIPE #793

• Date: Friday, July 18, 2008 -- 4pm
• Location: Hartsville, SC
• Kitchen: My parents' house
• Fellow Chef: Matty
  
• Dining Companion: Teri and Terry
• Recipe Rating: A-
  

The pickings in the Cookies, Bars, and Confections section of The Book are getting a little slim. I love cookies, so I have made most of the things that sound good already. I hadn't made these though, because they require a madeleine pan, which I didn't have. I always intended to borrow Vero's but I kept forgetting, and then she moved away. However, when I went to visit my parents a couple weeks ago, my mom bought me the proper pan as a gift, and as soon as we got home from the store, I made these cookies in it!

These madeleines were good! Despite being in the cookie section of The Book, a madeleine is much more like a small cake than it is like a cookie. A very, very buttery small cake (1 1/2 sticks of butter for 1 1/4 cups of sifted flour -- that's a lot of butter!). This recipe had a touch of lemon zest added, which was a nice complement to the rich butter flavor of the cookies. The recipe was simple enough, but involved seemingly endless sifting and folding! Basically: sift the flour. Sift the flour again with the baking powder and salt. Beat eggs and sugar for a long, long time. Sift flour mixture over eggs in five batches, folding each time. Fold in zest. Fold in butter. Spoon into molds and bake. Dust with powdered sugar and eat. Simple, no? They were easy to make and warm out of the oven they were amazing! They had a tender crumb and a great butter flavor. Right around the edges the cookies had a slightly crispiness which was awesome. Be careful with the cooking time -- I baked the first batch using the times suggested in The Book and they were a bit over-baked, so they came out a touch dry. I pulled the other batches after just 8 minutes (rather than the 10 suggested in The Book) and they were perfect. Overall, this was a solid madeleine recipe!

Here is the recipe.



I love live music. Every time I go to a concert I think, "I should go to more concerts." And I love, Love, LOVE George Michael (embarrassing? maybe, but I stand behind it.). Anyone who has ridden in a car with me in the last year or two has no doubt been subjected to my love of George Michael. I have a favorite George Michael CD and it cycles through my car stereo with great frequency. So when I found out George Michael was touring in the US for the first time in something like 17 years, I was pretty excited. And he was coming to Boston! And Matty and I could get tickets! I bought tickets the hour they went on sale months and months ago. Then, Matty found out that Russ' bachelor party was taking place at the concert and so he had to ditch me to party with the boys. I was less excited about that. Luckily I knew the perfect person to ask to go with me! So last night Ricky and I went to see George Michael in concert, and it was awesome. Seriously, AWESOME! It was one of those experiences where you feel so filled with joy that you just want to dance or yell -- and fortunately those are two things that you can easily do at a George Michael concert! I would try to explain all the ways in which it was awesome, but I couldn't possibly capture it. All I can say is, if you live in one of the cities on his tour, buy tickets! You won't regret it. I was really amazing.