ffwd – honey-spiced madeleines

Madeleines are not something that I typically have, think about, or…?  In fact, I don’t remember the last time I had one  before this past week. But… the pans are incredibly cute! I broke down and bought one some time back – either before or after getting Dorie Greenspan’s Around My French Table. So I was excited that this little cake was chosen for this month.

I was planning on getting together with some friends for coffee one morning, so I thought – make the Madeleines! As I read the recipe, I debated about the idea of making the batter and then filling the pans the night before, but Dorie was so encouraging, that I thought – why not?

My first challenge was that I was going to be making these on a Monday night – not my best event timing! But I got my ingredients together, and I was off!

I really like this flavor combination, so was happy to have the chance to break out some cinnamon, cloves, ginger, orange and vanilla.

The dry ingredients are mixed together first, so that they are ready to fold into the egg mixture.

Using one of my favorite tools, the microplane grater, the zest is added to the sugar.

To take advantage of the flavorful oils in the orange zest, it’s rubbed into the sugar – smelling fabulous!

Then eggs are added, to be whisked with the orange sugar. Here’s where I think things started to go a little bit south…

If I had followed the recipe, then I would have prepared my pan ahead. But no, I thought “I’ll just do that while the eggs are mixing – you can’t go wrong with that!” Well, prepping those scallop-shaped molds is trickier than I thought, so it took a little longer. Who knew that whole eggs would whip to such a high volume?

The afore-mentioned pan – I think I needed a new technique for pan prep.

After folding the dry mixture and butter into the eggs, it was still a very fluffy batter. I ended up with more than I needed, and well, over-filled a bit (not knowing if it would contract in the refrigerator overnight, or how filled they really needed to be).

Overstuffed shells, ready for the overnight rest!

Just out of the oven… you can see, a bit of spill-over, but they look nice and golden!

My cakes, pre-primp. I ended up deciding that I could just trim them up to make them nice and tidy for serving! (plus, then I could have a taste of those trimmed-off crumbs!)

For a first-time Madeleine, not too bad, but definitely something I need to work on. I don’t know that I could go all Proustian about these, but the shape is fun, and I can see a few spots where I made mistakes, so I’d like to try them again.

As for my friends, we ended up getting together in the afternoon instead. The Madeleines were declared “delicious”, and would have gone perfectly with a cup of tea or a nice coffee. In fact, I think they would be even more perfect on a rainy day, cozy and cuddled up reading a book, with a nice hot cup of something.