Do you ever sit down with yourself and think, “What would I have said a year ago if someone had told me that I would be where I am now?” I like to imagine going back in time and kicking around with past Kate. This time last year, I was a newly minted political science major freshman. So I imagine going back in time and saying, “Yo, listen. You are definitely in the right major. This time next year you will have your very own faculty advisor and you will be head-over-heels for China. Also, you’ll be doing an independent study, which is practically graduate school work, with one very cool lady. It’ll be about Sino-Japanese economics and the environment.
“I’ll let that one sink in. Okay, and also, you’ll have an apartment with a loft bed, but more importantly, you’ll have a longboard and a leopard print coat. Things are going to change, my friend.”
And past Kate would laugh and be like, “China? I thought I was doing Western Europe? Also, longboard? What? What apartment?”
My point being, so much has changed in the last year. Wow.
So the morning I made these, I woke up and thought, “Today is a day for madeleines.” I am also obsessed with cardamoms, so a quick Googlefest brought me to Martha Stewart, where I poached this recipe.
Ingredients:
- 1/2 stick butter (1/4 cup)
- 1 tbsp honey (I had super fancy-ass honey, but I GUESS you could use that shit that comes in a bottle shaped like a bear. You know, if you have no standards.)
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 3/4 cups flour
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 3/4 tsp ground cardamom
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1/4 cup sugar
- 2 large eggs
Recipe:
Melt butter in a tiny pot. Remove from heat and stir in honey and vanilla. Let that hang out until it’s cool. In the meantime, prepare the rest of the batter.
In a small bowl, stir together the flour, baking powder, cardamom, and salt.
Preheat oven to 325 minutes while you whisk together the eggs and sugar. Fold in the flour mixture until combined, and then stir in the butter mixture until combined as well. Wrap with cling film and refrigerate for half an hour.
When you pour the batter into your greased molds, fill them only halfway. Even if it doesn’t seem like enough. Because they puff up like mad.
I always make little mutant madeleines in the first batch.
There we go.
Bake for 7-8 minutes until they look like the ones in the picture.
Martha Stewart also includes a recipe for orange glaze, but I didn’t make that because I had no oranges. If you’re bent on citrus, though, check out the link above.
Sadly, I have no book recommendation this time because I no longer read. I only research. We have reached that point in the quarter. It’s only three weeks in, you say! How can you be so swamped!
To which I reply, such is the life of an over-achiever.
However, I did read a comic called Take What You Can Carry about a juvenile delinquent in the present day and a young Japanese American who ended up in an internment camp in WWII. It’s very good and very short and very worth your time.
Foodography 