I wasn’t kidding in the last line of the post down below. This week I’m making hand-held pies, known commercially in the U.S. as Pop-Tarts. Really, Pop-Tarts are nothing more than square turnovers: filled pieces of pie dough that make a handy, mess-free single serving snack. Amazing what something as seemingly minor as a shape […]

Quite a bit of interesting chatter around here on the subject of Madeleines over the weekend, some in the comment fields, some via email, all on the subject of what makes a “true” Madeleine. There can be no definitive answer to that of course, since the perfect Madeleine is in the eye (more precisely, the mouth) of the beholder. For every person out there who claims to have made a textbook Madeleine there’s someone else who thinks it’s dirt. Most of these people live in France, of course. Not only are Madeleines taken much more seriously there, there are bakers who have spent a good chunk of their lives working to perfect them.

Back in my Chicago-area baking days I used to like to go to trade shows, specifically the wedding shows where bakers would show up to debut new designs and test-market new products. Of course every bakery used the opportunity to shop the competition. The male proprietors of the family-owned shops would stroll around shaking hands and cracking jokes. The 1-woman-shop wedding cake bakers would scurry hither and yon, sneaking peeks. And then there were the pastry shop owners, usually women, with their culinary school minions in tow: usually female, dressed matching toques, hair pulled back in neat little buns. They’d stop in front of each display where they’d press their index fingers to their lips and deconstruct each cake, every petit four.

Forgive the lack of posting yesterday, but I was beat. Two days of traveling between which were two 10-hour days of running all over a small Wisconsin city asking people questions over a cameraman’s shoulder. Shooting commercials is a rarity for me these days, and I always forget how exhausting the process is: lots of standing-around boredom punctuated by moments of extreme pressure when everybody has to be “on” in big way.

Reader Alli asks:

Um, Joe, exactly how old was little Marcel when his mommy was serving him those cookies and tea?

Funny question, Alli. It was actually his aunt, as reader Noel reminded me, but the answer is about 30. Truth be told, Proust was something of a…well what should I say here…a momma’s boy. He lived at home with his parents for as long as they lived, until he was in his early 30’s. His mother died in 1905 and after that he continued to live in his family’s apartment in Paris until his own death in 1922.

Proust novels. Well, maybe not really, but it may well be true that Madeleines would be lost to the scrap dough heap of history if it weren’t for In Search of Lost Time, the Proust classic that most of us knew as A Remembrance of Things Past growing up. If you never read any of it in school, In Search of Lost Time is an autobiographical novel that begins with Proust’s aunt laying before him a cup of herbal tea (poor Marcel had terrible digestive problems, don’t you know) and a Madeleine. He dips the edge of the cake in the tea, tastes it, and an extended flashback ensues. And when I say extended, I’m talking 4,000+ pages. Not even Jimi Hendrix tripped that long, and he had an endless supply of LSD-soaked headbands. Clearly Madeleines have a powerful effect on some people.

What can I say — they’re a classic! Something every pastry baker needs in their repertoire, no? I hope to get a few made before I have to take off again, another short week darnit.