Madeleines

A long time ago at a favorite shop in Nevada in the sale bin was a pan . . . . And so I bought it and brought it home to Linderhof.

You must understand that I'm really not a "gadget" person and am not really into buying things with a single purpose. But I was drawn to this interesting little pan.

A Madeleine pan

And I made madeleines. From a traditional recipe and, with my first taste, I fell in love with these little tea cakes.

I make them all the time -- not the traditional madeleine, however, but corn madeleines to eat with soup or a salad for lunch and I figured that any muffin recipe will make a good madeleine. I love the little shell shaped caked and they are fun to serve with lunch.

My favorite is orange/rosemary which is great for tea. Lemon basil madeleines are not bad, either.

But for a recent lunch with friends, the madeleines were lemon poppyseed.

I used a favorite lemon poppyseed muffin recipe -- half the recipe for the muffins made in a madeleine pan.
These shell shaped morsels are perfect whether for lunch or tea or even dessert. The madeleine pan (which when bought, I wondered exactly how much I would use it) gets far more use than my muffin tin.

That first pan -- bought for a mere $4 gets a lot of use. So much so that I bought another pan (at full price from Williams-Sonoma) so that I could make two batches at once when I had company.

The recipe for lemon poppyseed muffins which can be baked in muffin cups if you don't have a madeleine pan is an old favorite that I've had "forever". So much so that I don't remember where I got it. It makes great muffins -- or great madeleines.

Lemon Poppyseed Madeleines

2 cups flour

2 t. baking powder

1/4 t. salt

1/2 cup butter, at room temperature

1 t. finely grated lemon zest

2/3 cup sugar

2 large eggs, at room temperature

4 t. poppy seeds

1/2 cup milk

Preheat the oven to 375. Sift the flour, baking powder and salt into a medium bowl and set aside.

Cream the butter, zest and 2/3 cup sugar until light and fluffy with an electric mixer (about 2 min). Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well afer each addition. Remove the bowl from the mixer and stir in the poppyseeds.

Fold the flour in 3 parts into the butter mixture, alternating with the milk in 2 parts, until just combined. Take care not to overmix the batter. Divide the batter evenly into the muffin tin (which has been brushed with butter) Bake until golden. (about 25 min.)

NOTE: To bake the batter in a madeleine pan, you need to grease and flour the pan well. Put a tablespoon of batter into each shell (not too much -- the shell needs to look skimpy rather than too full). It doesn't take quite 25 min to bake the madeleines. And I use 1/2 of the recipe if I just make one pan of madeleines.