Today we baked another French classic : the Madeleine. This famous delicacy is usually enjoyed for afternoon tea. Madeleines are very small sponge cakes, traditionally flavoured with lemon, and have a distinctive shell-like shape, much easier to do than commonly thought.
The legend of this cake is traced back to the 18th century. Stanisław Leszczyński, Duke of Lorraine, was having a large dinner party in his Château de Commercy, in 1755. In the kitchen, an argument occurred between the steward and the cook, leading to the latter quitting and taking all the freshly baked deserts with him. The dinner seemed compromised until a young maid, Madeleine Paulmier, offered to cook a cake recipe she inherited from her grandmother. The warm welcome that this uniquely shaped cake received, baked in scallops shells back then, inspired Stanislaw to name the cake after the young heroine who saved his dinner. To this day, Commercy is still regarded as the home of the madeleines.
Madeleines were also made famous by the French author, Marcel Proust, in his novel "In Search of Lost Time". He uses madeleines to demonstrate the contrast of involuntary memory and voluntary memory (retrieved by putting conscious effort into remembering events, and therefore inevitably partial). Now known as the "episode of the madeleine", the cake, when dipped in a cup of tea, suddenly evokes not only a mere memory, but the full essence and feeling of a childhood event. The "madeleine de Proust" became a popular metaphor commonly used in French to describe something that triggers an involuntary memory.
But enough with history, to make this delicacy, you will need a madeleine cake mold, now widely found in specialized kitchen equipment stores and online. The cooking time will vary depending on your oven, and since it only needs between 8 and 10 minutes of cooking I would advise you to stay around to check on it regularly. A perfectly baked madeleine should be light golden-brown, with a little bump on the top side, and the distinctive shell-shape on the other side. The recipe is very versatile and you can replace the lemon by vanilla, or add some chocolate chips. We'll be presenting some other variations, including savory ones in the future ;-)
If you have kids around, make this recipe with them ! It doesn't need anything sharp, it's easy as pie, and you will create some true "madeleine de Proust" moments for them.
 20 minutes + 1h resting time |
 8-10 minutes + until cold |
 20 madeleines |
