My obsession with Madeleines didn’t start with Marcel Proust. He apparently put these scallop-edged tea cakes on the world’s culinary map by mentioning them in his novel Remembrance of Things Past:

She sent for one of those squat plump little cakes called “petites madeleines,” which look as though they had been molded in the fluted valve of a scallop shell … I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An exquisite pleasure invaded my senses …

And suddenly the memory revealed itself. The taste was that of the little piece of madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray … when I went to say good morning to her in her bedroom, my aunt Leonie used to give me, dipping it first in her own cup of tea or tisane …. and the whole of Combray and its surroundings, taking shape and solidity, sprang into being, town and garden alike, from my cup of tea.

Since then, they’ve taken on a mythical quality and have become an object of adoration and among bakers (and readers) the world over. My introduction to them didn’t involve any Proustian interests whatsoever. I could claim otherwise and spin a tale of how I used to while away my summers appreciating the subtle character shifts and narrative devices in Proust’s novels. But my family reads this blog and they know the extent of my reading only goes as deep as, well, it doesn’t.

The real story behind my Madeleine mania lies in the discovery of pans like these at a baking supply store five years ago. I have a fondness for making tiny, delicate things. Petit fours (many tragic attempts and I STILL haven’t gotten the hang of them!), mini cupcakes, spun-sugar threads around made-from-scratch cream puffs—these are what I LOVE to do. The more work something is, the more compelling it is for me to make. So, when I saw these buried under a bunch of other baking pans, I thought about how the tiny cakes would come out as pretty seashell shapes, with golden brown, crisp edges, and I couldn’t wait to get them home and try them out.

And try them out, I did, with many disastrous attempts. The first pans I had were smaller than these and didn’t have a non-stick coating, so I burned them. I also couldn’t find a recipe I was happy with. Madeleines are supposed to be substantial and dense, a bit dry (but not too much), and should have a characteristic hump on the back.

The humps mean you’ve worked the batter at just the right level for it to develop, without the aid of leavening (like baking soda or baking powder). The recipes I tried led to results that spanned the spectrum: On one end were the sponge-cake like, airier ones, and on the other, the tasty excuses for hockey pucks.

Finally, this past weekend, I found Madeleine nirvana. I was actually nervous about this batch because the batter was thicker than anything I’d ever worked with—almost like cookie dough! It was so thick, I had to use my cookie-dough scoop to measure them out into the shell shapes. (You’ll see below that I did three globs for each shell.) I made sure to use cooking spray and flour for the molds.

Something in my gut told me this recipe was IT. You know why? It was uncomplicated. It didn’t ask me to let the dough rest for an hour, or refrigerate the pans, chant a secret incantation or whatever else I had to do in many other past recipes. All it took were the most basic ingredients found in a pantry: sugar, eggs, and flour. Add some butter and fresh lemon zest, and you have the simplicity that’s characteristic in the greatest desserts.

The clean, honest flavors came together in a diminutive morsel that’s perfect for dunking in tea, or in melted dark chocolate (which is what I decided to do).

I’m sharing this recipe by giving you a link, HERE, to the Epicurious website, where I found it after many years of searching. My only advice to you, if you plan to make these, is to trust the recipe’s simplicity. Sometimes, we all make it harder for ourselves, even in the kitchen.

I hope you enjoy making these as much as I did, and that you make Proust proud.

Another test post, to see how I can do this with an image from the web, rather than from my phone. These yummy clues are from a cupcake decorating contest featured on laughingsquid.com.

…the eggs! I’m testing out mobile blogging from my new toy.:)

How funny is this Martha Stewart blooper reel? She gets run down by a cow and accidentally says “hairy balls.” Hilarious!

And in case you haven’t caught on to it yet, there’s a new show on the Food Network that reeled me in with its first episode last Sunday. It’s the reality show The Chef Jeff Project, where a successful chef (Jeff Henderson) who used to be in jail takes six kids down on their luck and teaches them life skills by giving them a chance to shine in the kitchen. From the FN website:

Jeff Henderson grew up on the tough streets of South Central L.A. and San Diego. At 19 he was running a $35,000-a-week cocaine operation. At 24, Jeff was arrested and sent to prison, where he spent the next ten years. While incarcerated, Jeff discovered a passion for cooking and the drive to turn his life around. Jeff became Executive Chef at Café Bellagio in Las Vegas, wrote a bestselling book, and now he is focusing on giving back. In The Chef Jeff Project, he takes six at-risk young adults and commits to turning their lives around by putting them to work in his catering company, Posh Urban Cuisine. He arms them with the knowledge, the skills and, ultimately, the opportunity for a new life with a culinary career.

Here’s Chef Jeff

And his crew:

Brett, Adam, Maria

Kathy, Alonzo, Shante

My favorite character so far is Kathy, who used to be a drug addict and had no clue what to make as a signature dish, which was Chef Jeff’s first task for the team. She ended up preparing a fresh salad with some greens and fruit, along with the surprising inclusion of fresh cherries (simplicity on a plate can be a refreshing change in these overseasoned times). Plus, I like how Chef Jeff is hardcore and tough-talking but like a big old softie at the same time. I can’t wait for the next episode! (The show airs at 10 pm PST on Sundays.)

This is a watermelon heart. Isn’t it yummycute? Don’t you just want to just sink your teeth into it? Well, how about biting into a whole bouquet?

This was an edible arrangement that Mama and I worked on. It was for a “Meet The Baby” Party (yes, I found out that there are such things) for Maxwell, my new nephew. I offered to help his grandma whose assignment was to provide fresh fruit for the guests. Instead of just heaping some fruit onto a platter, it was a chance for me to see if I could swing making an actual eatable bouquet. 

Mind you, edible arrangements like this are nothing new. In fact, a company called just that—Edible Arrangements—has built a successful business arranging and delivering these sweet bouquets. I’ve sent many to friends on birthdays and special occasions. But I’ve always thought that if I only had an excuse (and the time), I could study how the fruit is prepared and try to make one myself.

Here are some of the steps and tips, if you’d like to try your hand at making one for an upcoming baby/bridal shower or party.

YOU WILL NEED

·      baskets

·      weights (I used plastic bottles filled with water.)

·      floral foam

·      parsley for “grass/greenery”

·      wooden skewers in different lengths

·      lollipop sticks (read my note about this later)

·      steel cookie cutters in different shapes and sizes

·      dark and white dipping chocolate, if you’d like to include chocolate-dipped fruit in your bouquet

·      fruit

       Non-mushy fruit works best. (Save those bananas for muffins!)

       No apples because they’ll turn brown when exposed to air.

       We worked with:

             -     pineapple

             -     miniature pears

             -     strawberries

             -     grapes of all colors

             -     oranges

             -     cantaloupe

             -     honeydew

             -     watermelon

             -     large mutant blackberries that we found at the fruit market

PREP N’ STEPS

1)   Prep fruit by washing and drying individually. Be patient! This can get a bit tedious, especially with grapes and berries. Put on some 80’s music and just enjoy yourself.  :)

2)   Dip some fruit pieces in your melted dipping chocolate. My favorite is orange segments in dark chocolate and strawberries in white. Leave on racks to dry (strawberries) or wax paper (orange segments) while you do the rest.

3)   Put some weights at the bottom of your basket. This is so that the basket stays put when guests pull out the fruit. You can use clean rocks or bricks, depending on how large your basket is.

4)   Cover your weights with a kitchen towel to level the surface a bit and line with floral foam cut to size. The foam is very forgiving and you can cut all sorts of shapes to fill corners and pockets. Make small holes in the foam by twisting in the tip of a pair of scissors into it and staggering the holes throughout. “Plant” your parsley in these holes and in any gaps in the foam (start from the outside edge and make your way to the middle).

5)   While you’re prepping your basket, you hopefully would have coerced/cajoled/convinced a friend or family member to start cutting up the fruit. This way, you can start assembling the bouquet by sticking the fruit into the foam as the shapes are being made.

Some tips:

-     No need to peel the pineapple, just cut into rounds and into shapes by firmly pressing down on your cookie cutters.

-     Make sure round, flat pieces are not too thin, otherwise, they’ll slide down your skewers.

-     For tricky shapes, make crescents. We did this for the honeydew and cantaloupe because some were too narrow to cut big shapes out of.

-     Top off a pineapple flower with a grape “center.” The different colors together on one stick make the pieces more interesting to look at.

-     Work from the center of your bouquet outwards, with taller pieces in the middle.

-     Lollipop sticks are safer for kids because of their blunted ends, but remember that these will start to bend after about half an hour because they start absorbing the juice from the fruit. Either snip off the pointed ends from wooden skewers or serve the arrangement right away.

-     Position heavier fruit lower to the foam, on the outer edges of the arrangement.

Here are the two baskets we put together, one for kids with fun duck, cowboy and cactus shapes and another for the young-at-heart.

I hope they inspire you to plant pots of blooming fruit of your own! :) 

I think I’m the latest one in my Creative Swap group to do a post on the crafty gifts I’ve sent to my swap partner Jen. Aside from it being a challenging past few weeks, I lost the cord that goes from my camera to the computer, prompting an even later post. Still, I’m happy this got sent out (finally!) and had fun making the crochet needle holder with some fabric I had on hand and ribbons, and embroidering the front, too.

I used some muslin stuffed with a thin layer of quilt stuffing and sewed a ribbon into the inside with different-size slots for needles of all types. I tried it out with my own (humble) set.

Embroidering the outside was something I knew I wanted to do before I even started. Embroidery is one of my favorite things to do, craft-wise, but I never get the chance to do it anymore. I started with printing out the design and holding up the needle holder against a window for a quick mock-up of how it would look like.

As a kid, I used to hate tracing patterns onto cloth. I would do it the painstakingly stupid way: lay the design over cloth, outline it by tracing over it REALLY HARD and lifting the paper to trace over the indentations on the cloth lightly with pencil. I know, I was young and dumb.

But for this project, thank God for my brother who suggested I use transfer paper—the kind he uses for art school. (I didn’t have no transfer paper growin’ up in the boonies of Negros Occidental, yo!) The brand is called Saral, available online and from art-supply stores. All he had was yellow (it comes in other colors), and I wasn’t sure if it would work, but I gave it a test run and decided I could live with it. It works pretty much like carbon paper of yore. You simply place it in between your design and the fabric and trace away.

I did the embroidery with whipped stitches and French knots in her favorite color, green (I wonder if it’s because of the university she graduated from? If so, I’m not telling her na lang what fated school I’m from! Hee.) Here’s Jen’s loot again, with some crochet mags and resource books, my favorite guilty-pleasure candy, a hokey postcard (I love how fake the bears look!) and a ball of Sugar ‘n Cream yarn with some of her favorite colors in it. (Doesn’t it look good enough to eat?)

Till next swap, folks!

(If you’re interested in joining our little band of rockin’ crafters, see details on Caryn’s blog HERE.)

This is recipe #2 in The Girl With A Curl’s Fallin’ For Soup project.

This Turkey Chili is a family favorite. It’s embarrassingly easy to make! I’ve made this many times, but have found that its full, spicy flavor is best with the sweetness of cornbread, made moist by buttermilk and topped with fresh corn, so I try to make both when I get the chance. A chilly wind was blowing through the kitchen windows today, and this made for a perfect, cozy dinner.

CURLY TURKEY CHILI

* 1 tablespoon vegetable oil

* 1 pound ground turkey

* 1 29-oz. can tomato sauce

* 1 15-oz. can diced tomatoes with jalapenos

* 1 1/2 to 2 cups water

* 1 15-oz. can white beans, rinsed and drained

* 1 15-oz. can red kidney beans, rinsed and drained

* 1 15-0z. can corn kernels, drained

* 1 large onion, chopped

* 2 tablespoons chili powder

* 1 teaspoon red pepper flakes

* 1/2 tablespoon garlic powder

* 1/2 tablespoon ground cumin

* 1 pinch ground black pepper

* 1 pinch ground allspice

* salt to taste

DIRECTIONS

1. Heat oil in a deep pot, brown ground turkey in it. Drop in the onion and saute until soft.

2. Pour in the tomato sauce, tomatoes with jalapenos, and about a cup and a half of water. Stir. Add all your spices: red pepper, chili, garlic powder, cumin, black pepper and allspice. Mix in.

Bring chili to boil, then lower heat to simmer for as long as you want, stirring every so often. I’ve seriously simmered this up to three hours, the house filling up with that delicious chili smell. This time, I did so about an hour and 20 minutes while I tackled the laundry.

3. Drop in the two kinds of beans and corn.

Simmer for about 20 minutes more. Serve with some shredded cheddar cheese on top. You can also add dollop of sour cream.

GOLDEN BUTTERMILK CORNBREAD

Seriously the best I’ve tried (I’ve had many, but always come back to this). I’ve deduced that the buttermilk is key. I’m not entirely sure what buttermilk is, though I do know it’s a dairy by-product that’s a sour milk of sorts. Don’t have any on hand? You can make an easy substitute by adding 1 tablespoon of lemon juice or vinegar or 1 3/4 teaspoons of cream of tartar to each cup of milk. Stir, let sit for about 10 minutes, and use.

* 1 cup unsalted butter

* 2/3 cup white sugar

* 2 eggs

* 1 cup buttermilk

* 1/2 teaspoon baking soda

* 1 cup cornmeal

* 1 cup ap flour

* 1/2 teaspoon salt

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat over to 375 degrees. Grease an 8-inch square pan. Shuck fresh corn and slice top section of kernels into a bowl. Scrape the rest into a separate bowl.

2. Melt butter in a microwave, taking care to check at intervals.

3. Pour melted butter in a mixing bowl. Add sugar and stir.

4. Add eggs and beat quickly. Dissolve baking soda in buttermilk and pour that mixture into the melted butter mixture. Stir in the scraped fresh corn.

5. Stir in cornmeal, flour and salt and blend, just until all ingredients are incorporated. Pour into pan and top with corn kernels.

6. Bake for 30-40 minutes until golden brown on top. I usually underbake this by about 3 minutes.

There’s nothing like chili to kill the chill!

Have a great start to your weeks, everyone!