Madeleines

Madeleines . . . the first time I had memorable madeleines was at Café Boulud. They were sitting in a warm nest of linen napkins, and even though I was full from the meal, I devoured them.

Little miniature tea cakes, madeleines are described as "small, shell-shaped cakes made of flour, eggs, sugar, and butter and baked in molds." I think we can all agree that we could use more madeleines in our lives, so I couldn't wait to look through a whole book about them!

Beautiful endpapers should always be acknowledged.

If I woke up to that basket of madeleines every morning, I would be happy and content. All would be right.

I quickly flipped to chapter three, dark and deluxe chocolate madeleines!

Madeleines: Elegant French Tea Cakes to Bake and Share
Written by Barbara Feldman Morse
Photographs by Steve Legato
ISBN 13: 9781594747403
ISBN 10: 1594747407
Publisher: Quirk Books
Hardcover: 224 pages

Let's give the dark chocolate espresso madeleines a try. The author mentions that this recipe was adapted from her award-winning recipe that is a mix between brownies, fudge, and dense chocolate cake.

I used a double boiler and a stand mixer to create the batter. A lot of butter, sugar, semisweet chocolate chips, espresso powder, eggs, flour, and cocoa powder went into this.

This particular batter was dark, thick, and shiny. It also doesn't rise much, so you can fill the molds to the top without worrying about overflow.

The espresso flavor really stands out, the only thing I wished was that my mold was more defined. I felt that they didn't produce enough of a shell imprint on the madeleines. So if you're on the search for madeleine pans, get ones with more defined edges!

If you're not picky on how they look, then it doesn't matter because they taste great anyways. Looking over the table of contents, I would want to try these recipes next: the classic French madeleines, lemon poppy seed, chai tea, peanut butter and jelly, sunshine, molten, peaches and cream, snowball, fresh lemon drop, browned butter pecan, gruyère and rosemary, brie-stuffed, caramelized onion and asiago, and banana foster. As you can see, there are savory and appetizer madeleines!

Disclaimer: A review copy of Madeleines was sent to me for review from Eric Smith at Quirk Books. Thank you! No incentives were used to produce a positive review of this book.