I am so proud and excited to say, I have just completed my first baking order ever! One of our family friends heard about my insane amount of baking this summer and took a look at this little blog, and decided she'd love for me to bake a couple things for her son's camping trip over the weekend. So, after a bit of discussion and advising, she decided she'd like me to make my Blondies and Chocolate Chip Cookies. The only change I made was to take out the peanut butter chips (in case of allergies!) so I increased the dried apricot and chocolate pieces. (Beware, adding more dried fruit makes the dough take longer to bake- so if you make the recipe linked here, make sure you add about 8-10 more minutes baking time)Since I also had half a bread dough left in the fridge I made some Baguette, and for my last day of work (!!!!!) I made a typically French dessert, Madeleines!
Luckily, I had Miss Dorie's wonderful Madeleine recipe waiting for me in Baking From My Home To Yours, so I made the batter before work so it would have plenty of time to set to make lovely humped cookies.
Thankfully, even though I feel like I've been going nonstop since 7 am this morning, I managed to bake up everything I wanted to, and I hope that our friend enjoys the desserts this weekend!
Lemon Madeleine's
(lovingly borrowed from Dorie Greenspan)
Ingredients:
- 2/3 cup all purpose flour
- 3/4 teaspoon baking powder
- pinch of salt
- 1/2 cup sugar
- grated zest of 1 lemon
- 2 large eggs. at room temperature
- 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
- 3/4 stick (6 tbsp)unsalted butter, melted and cooled
- confectioner's sugar, for dusting
Directions:
- Whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt.
- Working in a mixer bowl, rub the sugar and lemon zest together with your fingertips until the sugar is moist and fragrant. Add the eggs to the bowl. Working with the whisk attachment, beat the sugar and eggs together on medium high speed until pale, thick and light, 2 to 3 minutes. Beat in the vanilla. With a rubber spatula, very gently fold in the dry ingredients, followed by the melted butter. Press a piece of plastic wrap against the surface of the batter and refrigerate it for at least 3 hours, or for up to 2 days. (You can also spoon the batter into the greased and floured madeleine molds, cover and refrigerate, then bake the madeleines directly from the fridge.)
- Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 400F. Butter and flour the madeleine mold and place the pan on a baking sheet.
- Spoon the batter into the molds, filling each one almost to the top. Don't worry about spreading the batter evenly, the oven's heat will take care of that. Bake the madeleines for 11-13 mins, or until they are golden and the tops spring back when touched. Remove the pan from the oven and release the madeleines from the mold by rapping the edge of the pan using your fingers or a butter knife. Transfer the madeleines to a rack to cool to just warm or to room temperature.
- If you are making minis and have more batter, bake the next batch, make certain that you cool, then properly prepare the pan before baking.
- Just before serving, dust the madeleines with confectioners' sugar.
*The recipe is said to yield 12 large madeleines, but I easily made 24 in my "large" madeleine pan. Just be sure to not over-fill the pans, the batter grows considerably in the oven.*
Happy Baking!
Jessica
