Sweet Madeleine

A different kind of cookie.

Very soft and cake-like. Cakies!

These are one of those fancy seeming french food things that people are scared to try making. But there's no reason to be afraid of these plain little things.

And they are quite plain. I have no idea how they got their reputation. Gossip is a crazy thing. Someone somewhere probably heard something out of context and misinterpreted the statement and then of course went running off to tell everyone they know. Who all of course did the same thing.

I once made a joke about gossip that turned into a rumour: some editor had left a publisher and I commented about the gossip flying and jokingly made a ridiculous speculation; a few hours later someone started a thread on the forum where I'd made the joke about the editor going off to do the very thing I'd joked about. She's see my speculation repeated on some other forum, but not as a joke! I think it even made it to a blog or two.

I laughed my ass off. I'm still proud of that one.

Also proud that I managed to make nearly 7 dozen madeleines in about 2 hours. And that includes dishes.

Madeleines

**these are the quantities for about 2 dozen**

**I tripled the recipe!!**

• 2 eggs
• 2/3 c sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 tsp lemon zest
• 1 c flour
• 1/2 c butter

There is absolutely nothing fancy or difficult about this ingredient list.

You also don't need fancy tools or mixers or anything to make them.

First thing you should do is melt the butter.

Next, sift the flour.

I'm usually not an advocate of the sifting step, but in this case, I think it's a good idea. Old school baking recipes were done by mass (weight) not by volume, and when you sift the flour, you lighten it. A cup of packed flour weights a lot more than a cup of sifted.

There, that's the toughest part of this recipe. Sifting flour. OMG AN EXTRA STEP!!!

I sifted mine into a bowl and let it hang out there until I needed it.

Measure a tablespoon or so of butter out of the half cup that you melted, and add it to a bit of flour in a small bowl.

Rather than butter and flour your pans, you're going to use this mixture to flour-butter them. I am loving this idea. I covered the leftovers and put them in the fridge; I'll let you know how it works out on the next cake I bake!

Crack the eggs into a big bowl, add the sugar and stir with a wooden spoon. You don't even have to beat them. No whisking. Just stir. So unfancy.

Once the eggs and sugar have been stirred to a bright yellow, add the lemon zest and vanilla.

You can leave the zest out, or replace it with orange, if you'd prefer. I'm contemplating replacing it with lavender flowers.

Spoon the sifted flour into the measuring cup, and level the top. Trust me, this way, it will weigh a lot less than if you'd just spooned it from the bag.

Again, a plain old stir is all you need to do to get the flour mixed into the batter.

Pour the remaining butter around the edges of the bowl and once again, stir it in.

You should end up with a sticky feeling batter that makes a wide ribbon when you lift the spoon from the bowl.

When you let the batter rest for a minute, it will thicken, but as you stir it, it will start to feel thinner.

So, we've used all the same basic ingredients that are in pretty much every other cookie, but we've put them together in a very different way. That's what appealed to me about this recipe. Cream-butter-and-sugar-add-eggs-and-vanilla can get a bit mindlessly repetitive when you bake cookies almost every weekend.

Plus, the pans. I'm not fond of single use implements, and the shape is a very distinctive part of madeleines. I borrowed these ones from a coworker, but I'm pretty sure I'll be buying a set of my own. These things are way too easy, fun, and tasty to never make again.

Rub the flour-butter mixture into the molds while the oven preheats to 375. A little hotter than usual.

Drop a tablespoon or so of batter into each spot. Underfilling these things is better than overfilling them.

If your molds are completely full, bake them for 15 minutes. If partially like these ones, only 12 or 13 minutes is enough.

The edges will be crispy, the shell side golden, and the strange bump that forms on the top (which is apparently some kind of madeleine requirement) will be soft and buttery.

And then you dust them with powdered sugar.

I don't seem to have a light enough touch to "dust" anything.

They are tasty without the sugar too!

I can't help but wonder if the first ones were baked in the shells they resemble.

1-2-3-4 Can I Have a Little More?

All together now!

The first cookie request was shortbread. One of the easiest things to make and one of the most difficult to perfect. They should be tender, but not flakey, sweet, but not cloying, simple, but flavourful.

Sounds nearly impossible, I know. But really, it's as easy as 1, 2, 3... 4.

This recipe came from an old friend of mine. We did a cookie exchange every xmas, and I'd ransom my army of tiny gingerbread men for her shortbread coins. When I finally saw how she made them, I was stunned. So few ingredients and the preparation breaks all kinds of cookie rules. But, rules were made to be broken, right?

I've actually got plans to break more, so I figure this is a good way to work you into the idea of making cookies in a somewhat less than traditional manner.

Shortbread Cookies

• 1 c brown sugar
• 2 c unsalted butter
• 3 c flour
• 4 tbsp cornstarch

Now you know how I managed to remember the recipe all these years.

The most important thing to notice though: UNsalted butter. Most cookie recipes include salt to help the leaveners work, and so salted butter can be used as long as you decrease the added salt. This recipe, you may notice, requires neither of those. No salt to decrease, so no salt in the butter.

Brown sugar is also not entirely traditional, but with the absence of vanilla or any other flavouring the little bit of molasses goes a long way. It also adds a bit of gold to the "coins."

Now, this is where things get a little weird...

Put all of the ingredients into a bowl. (Butter really needs to be soft and room temperature)

Squish them.

I told you we'd be doing weird non-cookie preparation things.

You have to use your hands for this. Have to.

Don't knead, just squish. Kneading will start gluten forming and lengthen the dough. We want shortbreads, not longbreads.

In only a few minutes you'll end up with a very soft ball of dough. And no spoon to wash.

Much too soft to do anything with right now. 

So, split it into two, make sausages out of them, and chill them like we did to the creamsicle cookie filling.

Give them at least a half hour to chill and stiffen.

I left mine in there for about 2 hours.

And preheated the oven as soon as I took them out of the fridge.

300 degrees.

With a sharp knife, slice them just under a half inch thick. 8mm. or 3/8 of an inch.

They don't spread much so you can pack quite a few onto the parchment covered sheet.

Ideally, shortbread cookies should have no colour on the bottom of them. The low cooking temperature makes that easy. If you use white sugar and temps as low as 200F (you have to cook them for 20-25 minutes in an oven that low) you can get very pale cookies. Me, I like the caramel flavour that comes from the brown sugar and I'm not patient enough to wait 25 minutes for a sheet of cookies.

So, I do these at 300 for 15 minutes. Some came out a little on the golden side, but this is what you're looking for:

Top and bottom are pretty much the same colour.

They're very soft when they come out of the oven. Give them a minute on the sheet, and then slide the parchment onto the cooling rack.

When they're cooled, stack them into the magic cookie tin.

The crumbly, sandy texture of these absolutely melts in your mouth.

A few dozen of these and you can have my entire gingerbread army.

What cookie have you used as currency?