Rose Water Madeleines FTW

I did two batches of these so far. Batch 2 was more successful, but I'm holding out for something better. These are from Nigella's How to Be a Domestic Goddess, and I think to be a domestic goddess, one needs to learn how to not overbake his/her madeleines.

The picture she has is so powdery and angelic, she also called them rosebud madeleines. Maybe that has something to do with it.



It's a vase, get it?

And, obviously. Maybe it might improve the way I look at these buds? (I think I just triple entendre-ed myself.)
-Amanda

Madeleines in May-Hmm

That was a play on Amanda's title!

check it

We made those! Yeah they were good, yeah we love our dates and our earl greys. Lady grey? No thank you.



I won't lie--I struggled with the use of blender. I forgot to add water, and those blades did not appreciate waltzing with rough little dates. I actually wish I underblended, though, because finding little specks of juicy date really made the madeleine for me, and I wish the madeleine could've made it over and over and over.

We love the grease n flour. Classic.

Also the pelmeni :) Teaching Amanda the difference between pelmeni and pierogi was fun, because, i got hungry but I gave a pretty lumpy explanation. That's ok, our pielmeni were lumpy!



recipe aqui. Minor adjustment: we searched through aisles of beans, parking lots of angry food-shoppers, and mental inventories of frustrated grocers, and no adzuki beans could be found. So we went with the garbanzo. Admittedly, this made our pelmeni a bit drier, but half the work is showing up, right beans?

-Anna

Madeleine Mayhem (in a bad way)

I still don't understand how to make these. Anna rocked them a lot better than I did. I hope she posts the date earl grey ones she made. Those were bomb.

These are ugly and the fact that I made them at night and took pictures of them at night doesn't help either.



In addition to the recipe here, I added a chopped up Easter bunny.

He was one of three. These are the remainders, waiting for their unfortunates fates and maybe listening to this song in the meantime?




Killing Bunnies,
Amanda

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.