Madeleines

I visited my parents over the weekend, and decided to take full advantage of their fully stocked and awesome kitchen. I had several baked goods in mind for the weekend, and tea tasting to do. This is the first of several write-ups I'll have coming over the next few days! And as always, excuse the terrible picture quality - my phone is all I've got to use at the moment.

First up are the madeleines. I actually hadn't been planning to make madeleines, but I noticed my mother had a madeleine tray at the bottom of the pan drawer, so I thought... why not! I soon found out why not, though: they're super duper sticky and were damn near impossible to get out of the pan, even after very thorough greasing. In addition, the pan was ancient and terrible quality, so we wound up tossing it after we noticed several spots that it had begun rusting.

Anywho, here are a few pictures from the process!

1/2 cup unsalted butter (melted), 1 cup all-purpose flour, 1/2 teaspoon baking powder, 1/8 teaspoon salt, 3 large eggs (room temp.), 2/3 cup granulated sugar, 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

I kinda skipped the whole picture-of-the-dough part because... I don't know. It was a little intensive in that I needed to do certain steps in a relatively timely order. The eggs and sugar had to be whipped thoroughly into a very light, frothy batter, and I needed to mix everything else in loosely and somewhat quickly to prevent the dough from deflating. I just didn't think to take a picture of the dough at that point, but it was really fluffy and delicious, I promise!

I tweaked the recipe by replacing the vanilla extract with lemon. I wanted to use poppy seeds, but our bottle was probably older than I am, so it met the trash can.

Despite the difficulties in removing the buggers from the madeleine tray (hence the madeleine-cupcakes), they were delicious! Very spongey and great for dipping in tea or coffee. I definitely would make them again with a better tray - and probably even more grease.

Thank you JoyofBaking for the recipe!