Au Française!

 Next stop on the culinary express; Madeleines!

It would appear that Madeleines rose to fame due to Proust namedropping them in his ‘Remembrance of Things past’. The quote goes: “I raised to my lips a spoonful of the cake . . . a shudder ran through my whole body and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary changes that were taking place." Essentially he eats a piece of Madeleine and it instantly takes him back to his childhood. This scene has been parodied many times in various mediums. Most notably for me was when Tony Soprano takes a bite of a cured meat and is instantly flooded with childhood memories.

There are numerous sources out there on how to make an authentic Madeleine. I’ll get to that in my next post, but for now I’m going to talk about baking utensils. This is the first time that I’ve had to acquire a Madeleine pan, and in my entire window shopping, the most common pan I came across was these multi-coloured Silicone pans that seem to have become very fashionable. On several occasions, whilst browsing through the homeware departments I very nearly picked one up. However, after a bit of research I became more dubious and opted for a metal one. The main reason why I went against Silicone for my Madeline pan was because of the probable wobble factor when putting it in the oven. Silicone kitchen utensils do have their uses, and would probably be just fine for a baking tray or a larger cake mould but the balancing act of getting a soft pan filled with liquid into the oven just seems unnecessary to me. There were suggestions of placing a metal baking tray underneath the Silicone Madeline Pan, but I think this may alter the cooking time, and as the tray would be cool, could even distort the final result and colour. I think I made the right decision, but we shall see what the final result is.

Altogether now On Y Va!