Tried David Lebovitz's Lemon Madeleine's yesterday. Worked beautifully

marilynfl

Moderator
Apparently there are two schools of thought when it comes to madeleines: those who use a chemical rising agent and those who spit on those who use a chemical rising agent. Traditionalists feel eggs alone should lift the cookie to its golden humped heights. ("What hump?") Crossing baking lines into the other camp while actually living in the enemy camp, David's recipe uses baking powder. Since he's probably thrown away more madeleines than I'll ever make, I went with his.

However, since I did kinda/sorta get the whole egg-rising bit, I only used half his amount of baking powder. See, this is called waffling on the Maginot Line of Culinary Stand-offs.

I also tweaked by:

*adding 1/2 Tsp of lemon emulsion and 1 tsp of lemon juice plus the zest for more "lemoniness"

*sifting the flour into batter and stirring by hand AFTER adding the butter. But only because I didn't read the directions correctly. Worked fine anyway.

*I DIDN'T refrigerate the batter. It was already 12:30 and I wanted to get them to the library during this millennium.

*Piped out the batter using a pastry bag and a 1/2" tip.

I also added more lemon stuff to the icing and used orange juice instead of 2 Tbl of water.

Made 24 using two pans baked side-by-side.

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g166/Finer_Kitchens/Marilyn_CakeBalls/068.jpg

Based on the photo, I've either got a hot spot in the oven, a hot spot on the pan, or my camera's flash was on. I don't remember them looking so variant in goldenosity. Nonetheless, they ALL tasted good.

PS: I had made a chocolate batch a few months ago with the mini-size non-stick pan and wasn't all that impressed. I think these turned out MUCH more authentic looking with no sticking problem. I buttered the cavities, then put the pans in the frig while I made the batter. Only after I had the batter ready to pipe did I notice that the recipe said to butter, then flour. So I grabbed the bottle of Pam with flour and gave them a spritz then piped. Every cookie dropped out like a charm.

http://www.davidlebovitz.com/archives/2007/12/humpy_madeleine.html

 
These look wonderful M--I wonder if a bit of baking powder would lighten a genoise which uses the...

the same procedure? Sometimes mine come out a bit drier and denser than I'd like.

 
Charlie, I've never thought my genoise were dry, but then I always put something on it. So...

guess that throws that out, huh.

I didn't heat the eggs over simmering water, either. Which I do with the genoise. Nor did I brown the butter, then cool, like the genoise.

But nevertheless, it does turn out similar. I was just reading about flour and gluten strands in the "The New Best Recipes" from Cook's Illustrated and was very gentle with folding in the flour. Maybe that helped?

 
I usually soak genoise also, but sometimes they come a bit drier than other times. I guess the..

cookies don't need as much lift as the cake, so heating the eggs isn't necessary.

I don't brown the butter, but I like the idea.

 
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