Our Hopeful Home: Scrumptious Madeleines: French Confections

Serendipity surely had a hand in the recent turn of events that led me to make madeleines for the very first time. I recently came across a great recipe for madeleines over at one of my favorite blogs, The Charm of Home. If you're not familiar with these pretty little French sponge cakes, Wikipedia has this to say about them:

The madeleine (French pronunciation: [mad.lɛn], English /ˈmædleɪn/ or /ˌmædlˈeɪn/^[1]) or petite madeleine ([pə.tit mad.lɛn]) is a traditional small cake from Commercy and Liverdun, two communes of the Lorraine region in northeastern France.

Within a day of my finding Sherry's post about these delicious treats I actually found a madeleine tin mold for 99 cents at Goodwill, similar to the one pictured below.

It was fate I tell you.

And if you know me at all you'll know that I love all things French, so these cakes have been on my to-do list for a long time. I also love the sea, so their seashell shape is another reason I've always been drawn to them.

Madeleine Tin Mold

Source

I was pretty proud of myself with how they turned out.

I overfilled the molds on the first batch, and they did not look like the pretty cakes you see here! But I was quick to figure that out and the next two batches came out just right!

I'm a tea drinker (Earl Grey and Vanilla Caramel are my favorites) so I know I'll be having some of these cakes with my tea in the morning. I wanted to show you one of my many teacups that have been collected over the years, and I chose one in particular that has special meaning for me.

The cup and saucer was given to me by a dear friend who passed away a number of years ago. She knew how much I loved tea, and she actually shared with me a cup from her personal collection.

The bottom reads:

Fine Bone China,

"Shelley"

England.

She had impeccable taste and really knew her china ~ she was from England after all!

I will always treasure it.

And by the way, the large white plate was a Dollar Store purchase. I know, it looks just like the Pottery Barn Emma dinnerware! I bought out the last of their dinner plates and was so happy since our everyday plates are also white. I just added them into the mix. I love it when that happens!

I'm going to leave you with a collage of my madeleine pictures.

Aren't they incredibly photogenic?

And don't forget to stop by Sherry's blog The Charm of Home and get the recipe.

You won't be disappointed!

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