As my photography’s improved, I often look back at my earliest posts and I just want to do it over, for sake of getting a better photo. I’ve made madeleines before, though with this round I get to do another take with more detailed instructions – adding things that I do to make my life easier, like putting the madeleine pans on a baking sheet (or cookie sheet) so that it’s easier to take in and out of the oven, but didn’t think of adding to my first instructions.
Madeleines are little cakes, and they’re probably best known from the “madeleine episode” from Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time. (I quoted this passage when I posted my first madeleine recipe.) A near paradox of the madeleine Marcel Proust described and those who try recreating, in vain, the one he described is the crumb: madeleines are generally moist and soak up liquid like a sponge, whereas it is implied that M. Proust’s madeleine was dry and required to be dunked in the tea, sort of like biscotti. However, it is suggested by some theorists that perhaps the madeleine didn’t exist as there is no mention of it or any other baked goods that triggered childhood memories in M. Proust’s personal writings, and that it only served as a vehicle for this trip down memory lane.
I’ve become fixated on these “squat, plump little cakes” again, to quote M. Proust, since I got blueberries. And since blueberries and lemon go so well together, well – why not?
