Madeleines

Ladies and gentlemen, I bring you the madeleine. Dainty, sweet, and delicious. The madeleine pictured here doesn't look as quite as darling as it might were it dusted with powdered sugar and in the company of its madeleine friends, but even in this jail-like setting you can still admire its buttery, golden shell.

Sadly, my batch of little ladyfingers is not long for this world. Madeleines are best eaten same-day, since they dry out pretty quickly. I only made a dozen of them so they should not be hard to dispatch. I'm not going to include the recipe I used here just yet. I want to do some more testing to see if I can achieve better flavor. The texture of the batch I made today is pretty nice--light, melt-in-your-mouth--but the taste is on the bland side: mildly sweet with a little creaminess from the melted butter that gets folded into the batter right before you bake them. They remind me a little of a Twinkie cake, or one of those strawberry shortcake shells you can buy in the grocery. I'm hoping that the addition of strawberries in red wine syrup later tonight will be a good one. At least with this topping I may be able to extend their life for a few days (and save my waistline from extinction)!