About 10 years ago my boss at Urban gave me a gift certificate to a boutique kitchen store in Philadelphia called Kitchen Kapers.  If you’ve never been, it’s in the Rittenhouse area (on 17th, just south of Walnut) and worth a visit.  Anyway, one of the things I purchased there was a madeline pan.  This was probably in 2009 or 2010.  It’s now 2016, and I had never baked madelines until last night.  Why?  I have no idea what kept me from baking up the tasty treats.  Yesterday I was inspired, and they were absolutely delicious.

Unfortunately, the madeline pan didn’t make the kitchen supply cut from San Francisco.  So, I bought a new pan here in Toulouse earlier this week.  Our pan at home is larger (not sure it would’ve even fit in our oven here) and dark, non-stick.  So, I decided to go the silicon route for our new, second pan.  20:20 after baking last night, it’ll actually be REALLY nice to have two pans going forward (once reunited with our storage in a few years), as I could cut down on the chilling time with two pans and move a little faster.

I got the recipe from David Lebovitz, substituting chocolate chips for the lemon and orange.  Really, I wanted to make orange/chocolate chip madelines (not in his recipe), but the thought of melding the two reminded me of tasty mini cakes from the Barefoot Contessa (here…if you haven’t had these, they are AMAZING.  I made mine without the ganache on top – didn’t need it).  Unfortunately, though, I didn’t have an orange.  So, I just substituted the mini chocolate chips.

I was surprised to find I needed to chill the pan and the batter for an hour before I could start baking.  My pan made eight madelines and it took me three batches to use all the batter.  However, my first batch yielded slightly larger madelines as David says the spoonful isn’t scientific, but now I know how much to put in (about half the amount of my first batch).  If you’ve never made madelines before, it’s pretty interesting (to me) that the batter fills the entire mold, even without you helping it to do so.  My second batch was more springy & less dense (I think I kept the first batch in the oven for too long), and the third batch was parfait!

I’m super excited to visit the cake store around the corner and play around with favorings and/or spices to see what other types of madelines I could make.  As I (honestly) think this might be my new favorite treat.  They’re even better than a cookie, and maybe better than a brownie (though I’ll have to try making a chocolate batch!).

Bon Appétit!