Chard Chips and Madeleines Sitting Pretty in the Oven

So yesterday I found a madeleine pan at Sur la Table--lots of excitement. It was two dollars cheaper than the one at Williams-Sonoma. And last night I decided to try my hand at madeleines. I found some recipes for creative ones like honey spice and chocolate cinnamon, but I decided to go with a basic vanilla for my first go.
Not a good go.
Disaster is, in fact, the most appropriate description.
Hindsight is a beautiful thing, isn't it? Well,
a) I should have let the butter cool COMPLETELY before combining it with the rest of the batter, bad move number one.
b) Nearly every recipe you that you find for madeleines will say that you should let the batter sit in the refrigerator overnight before you bake them. There's a reason that there's near consensus on this fact!
c)Do not overfill them--less is more. You will have a terrible time taking the madeleines out if you overfill them--and they will be ugly. And honestly, madeleines exist to be pretty, so in essence you'd be bringing a good-for-nothing madeleine into the world. Do you want to be responsible for that? Yeah, no.
d) Some recipes say not to butter the pan; that they'll be "prettier" if you don't. Lies. Butter/spray the pan like crazy, otherwise you'll have a mess like mine.
Anyhow, most recipes make more batter than you need for a 12 standard size madeleine pan, i.e. the one I bought. So if this is the case for you too, most recipes make two batches (24 madeleines). Lucky me, this meant that I got a second chance with this batter. I refrigerated what was left of the batter overnight and a then a half day. Not much was left considering my earlier mistake with butter. At the bottom of the bowl was reconstituted butter slabs. They looked like soap. Ew.
But the five madeleines that I was able to recover came out beautifully! Small success but I'll take it.

Madeleines
2 eggs, 1 egg yolk

1/2 teaspoon vanilla (this might be fun with almond extract too)

1 cup sifted powered sugar

3/4 c. flour

1/4 tsp. baking powder (remember powder, soda=soap)

1 stick butter (melted and COOLED, again if not cooled=soap in shape though, not flavor)

Steps
1. Melt the butter. Let it cool.
2. Meanwhile, beat the eggs with the vanilla in a mixer on high speed for 5 minutes. Add the sifted powdered sugar slowly. The batter will start to look really shiny and pretty now. Let it beat for at medium speed for about 5 minutes.
3. As all this beating is going on sift the flour and the baking powder together in a small bowl.
4. Fold the flour mixture in parts to the pretty egg and sugar mixture.
5. Once that is done fold in the COOLED butter. Seriously, if it's not cooled completely it won't combine with the egg and flour mixture.
6. Refrigerate the batter for at least a couple of hours. Preferably overnight.
7. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Spray your pan like you'd spray bug spray at a huge cockroach coming at you (sorry bad imagery when we're talking about food).
8. Don't fill them all the way. Only 2/3 of the way at most. Bake for 10 minutes.
9. Let them cool a few minutes in the pan. Then carefully loosen them with your fingers. Knives can deal a madeleine major damage.
Et voilà!




And as for the chard chips; they're like kale chips only with torn up pieces of red and green chard, left over from the red lentil and chard curry Anna and I made on Saturday. Just tear up chard into bite-size pieces rinse it, pat dry, and drizzle with a teeny amount of olive oil. Bake at 375 for about 10 minutes. Enjoy! Oh and some of them might look super burnt. They're still good, at least I think so. But then again I like marshmallows burnt to a char, so don't necessarily take my opinion on that.