Madeline my madeleine

I've been intrigued...OK obsessed with with Madeleine cookies for the past couple of months. I have seen them, they are shell shaped cookies that look like yellow cake, and wondered if they were tasty or not. Then I heard or read about someone making cornbread Madeleine's and that was it...I had to get me one of those Madeleine pans. Thus enters the problem in that I don't buy things for myself. Since I've lost weight I have had to buy clothes that fit, but I just don't go out and buy myself things. I'll go pick them up and walk around with them but put them down and skulk out of the store.

I'm doing a dessert buffet for JBF 24 hour workers on Tuesday and had the menu all planned when I found out one of the owners, "everything sounds good, but I was thinking more fingery things." [thunk]Back to the drawing board. I want people to have things they don't normally get and I immediately thought about Madeleine cookies. You can change them up with just a tweak of the ingredients and all the blog posts i read made them sound super simple to make. One problem--you have to have the pan. Off I went to Williams-Sonoma and $54 later i had a Madeleine pan ($14)...all in one zyliss zester grater microplane and some Key lime lemon curd (for another recipe it was on clearance). I'm super excited about the zester grater thing--too cool. I was pretty excited about the pan, too. Mine is silver, bright shiny silver.

As I typed this post and scoured the Internet for pictures (thanks Williams-Sonoma for supplying the photos. Please visit their site and purchase something.) I realized I had been spelling Madeleine wrong...imagine that! It is spelled m-a-d-a-l-E-i-n-e which would explain the bizarre recipes and even worse pictures. I'll have much better luck researching the recipe with people who know how to spell the thing!

The recipe I found (with the wrong spelled name) was good. It's the one I'll post today. I highly recommend you getting yourself a Madeleine pan...these suckers took all of 20 minutes from start to finish to make that's it! I'm so excited about trying cornbread in them. More on that later.

Here's the recipe for Madeleine cookies. if you don't have a pan...you can cook these babies in a muffin tin (mini or not) and they turn out the same you just can't call them Madeleine's...you'd have to call them by her evil little sister's name...Agatha.

5 T. butter (melted and cooled)

1/2 cup flour

1/2 t. baking powder

1/4 t. salt

1 egg

1/3 cup sugar

1 t. vanilla

1 t. grated lemon zest (or lime, or, orange, or you get it)

Powdered sugar for dusting.

Preheat oven to 375 (if your pan is dark go with 350). Spray pan with non0stick spray (I use the flour/nonstick spray).

In a medium bowl: sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt. In a separate bowl: add egg, vanilla, zest, and sugar and mix until blended. Add flour to egg mixture and mix until blended. Slowly add your melted butter and stir to combine.

Spoon a heaping tablespoon of batter into each mold. Bake until puffed and golden around the edges (about 12 minutes) 10-15 minutes. Remove from pan and dust with powdered sugar. Now go to a closet and eat the whole batch. I used my small ice cream scoop because it's exactly a tablespoon (yes...I measured) and worked great. I had maybe two tablespoons of batter remaining, but didn't mess with it. You'll want to fill the molds to 2/3 full.

I've seen pictures with these babies dipped in chocolate. This made one batch of 12 large cookies.

Try these. If you have ever eaten a tea cake and said to yourself, "i wish it were crispier...and shaped like a shell" then you'd be in luck. Seriously, though they are good and do remind me of tea cakes (the good kind, not the ones that will absorb all of the saliva in your mouth and shut your salivary glands down).