Cakes and tarts – Page 9 – Myfrenchkitchen

Easter is spring time. Or spring is Eastertime.Whichever way, that is of course for us here in the Northern Hemisphere. Down south everybody is preparing for winter with their days beautiful and lazy with fall colors entering the scene.

Because I am so busy in the garden(every minute the skies give me a chance!) I don’t get to the stove much, and when I pass the stove per chance, I am too tired to the bone to cook and bake….so….. I am re-posting this delicious little cake from a past post; Lemon cake and writing our stories. I might just make a stop with my tired bones next to the oven and put it together for us too on Sunday afternoon to enjoy with English tea! I have never come across someone who didn’t fall in love with it right after that first bite..and just look at the recipe down below.. really….this is as easy(yet delicious) as it gets!

Pincée de sel:

Use freshly squeezed orange juice instead of lemon juice.
Add some grated lemon/orange rind to the mixture.
Top with some icing sugar of your choice, or serve without. I prefer without, since icing sugar makes it too sweet for me.
Decorate with fresh edible flowers.
The cake is even more flavorful the next day.
Use for dessert: break into pieces and serve, topped with strawberries, whipped cream and a berry coulis, OR serve with warm caramelized peaches and crème frâiche.

Here at Coin Perdu, I am fervently planting and digging and dividing, as much as my arm allows, that is. It is just wonderful to be back in the garden. The rains are still coming down very regularly, but the moment it stops, I charge outside to do a little something. A new garden is such hard work, especially in the preparation thereof, because planting in bad soil makes for even harder work the next season! It might look like nothing at the moment, BUT in a few weeks…!

..passion fruit juice for our break…

..mon cheri preparing the potager for me..along with his very willing assistants..

..early morning by the potager and the mist slowly lifting..while I slowly sip my coffee…oh, that first morning coffee..sooo good..mince!

..when taking a pause the chickens are there to “pause” along – this day I had un fraisier(strawberry cake) which I shared with them(of course!) and they loved every morsel! for the rest of the time, they scuffle around my feet in the soil, just coming up for some air every now and then..!

..still a lot to be done: the dalles(paving stones) must be laid on the terrace and partly into the lawn at the bottom, the wrought iron pergola must be constructed for the white glycine(wisteria), a stone bench under the small window. To the right I have planted kitchen herbs which I hope will grow under the walnut tree, since not many things grow under a walnut…

..eh bah voila..there you are, mon café..!

..my tulips are slow in the rising, but they are coming on steady..pretty soon they will be spectacular in their show off! I am so chuffed, because all my bulbs I brought back from Amsterdam, (see post here) is pushing through, except for 3 Allium bulbs I lost to mischievous rabbits..

..a lot of planting still awaits me – 60 lavenders, (lavande angustifolia, lavande intermedia, white lavenders) 20 santolinas, agapanthus, cistes, 4 olive trees, 6 Cypres de Provence, buddleias, kniphofias, ceaonothe de Versailles, 100 Siberian irises, then a lot of Iberis, Eryngiums, ficoides…

..In between all the pathways and staircases and dry hot corners, I stick in some thym serpolet and succulents like the ever popular sedums, sempervivums and jovibarbas, which grow beautifully in all those sunny spots…

* I am working on a series on tartes, tourtes, quiches et cakes, which I will combine with some table setting in white with silver, yellow with pottery, red with vintage and blue with rustic.

*So stick around..if I can just get my act togehter and organise my organising better..i will be back soon with the series on tartes, tourtes, quiches et cakes,

Joyeux Paques

et à bientôt!

Ronelle

Who doesn’t know les madeleines de Marcel Proust..? Those well-known shell shaped petits gateaux with their particular little hump on the one side and the ribbed shell opposite side.

Recipe translation:

90g butter and a little more for the pans
90g flour
75g sugar
10g honey
pinch of salt
2 eggs

*Melt the butter. In a bowl, whisk the eggs, sugar and salt for 5 minutes. Add the flour. Stir in with a wooden spoon. Add the cooled off melted butter and the honey. Leave to rest in the refrigerator for at least one hour.

Preheat the oven to 220 degrees C. Remove the dough from the fridge and leave at room temperature for 30 minutes. Melt the extra butter and brush the insides of madeleine pans. Fill the pans with the dough, about 1 tsp into each cavity. Bake for 10 minutes(5 minutes for the mini madeleines). Remove from the pans before completely cooled.

Extract from Proust, la cuisine retrouvé, Le Chêne, 1991. the recipe is created by Alain Senderens, who was inspired by the cooking of Proust.

Suggestions:

Add the lemon zest of 1/2 lemon
To get the nice hump on your madeleine, it is necessary to have the dough cool and the oven temperature high.
Bake the mini Madeleines only 5 minutes.
I prefer the real old fashioned metal pans. The ribbed shell effect is much more pronounced than when using the silicone pans.

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-My chickens produce small eggs with large egg yolks and I have to use 2 of them to replace 1 normal egg-

-Zest from a lemon to flavor les madeleines-

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Il etait une fois…La madeleine, histoires et recettes d’un produit d’exeption lorrain – Michel Caffier

(book to be found at Amazon.fr)

Marcel Proust said: (roughly translated from below) “One winter’s day, when I came home; my mother saw how cold I was and offered me a cup of tea. I didn’t usually drink tea and I refused, but then I changed my mind. she brought me some small cakes called madeleines which seemed to be molded in a scallop shell. Still overwhelmed by the sad day I had and the sad day that lay ahead , I mechanically brought a teaspoon of tea, in which I softened a piece of madeleine, to my lips. At that moment, when it touched my palate, I trembled, suddenly very aware of something extraordinary happening to me. I was overcome with a deilcious pleasure; isolated, without notion of its cause..I ceased feeling mediocre, ordinary, mortal. Where could this powerful joy have come from? I sensed it had something to do with the tasting of this tea and cake.”

This wonderful little book is all about la madelene, how this delicious French petit gateau was born, how it got its name, how it is labelled;, sold at the stations by young maidens, the influence of St Jacques de Compostelle and it ends with the traditional recipe, which is the ones I used, and a list of additions to change the madeleine with some chocolate, hone, lemon and more.

Legend has it that one day, at the chateau de Commercy of Stanislas, in the middle of a beautiful meal, the maître d’hotel reported an incident to the prince: out of anger towards his chef, the assistant chef took out his anger on the serving of the dessert. It is unsure in which form this revenge was, but the fact was, that there was no dessert to be served. A maidservant, witnessing the distress of the maître d’hotel, offered him a solution.Tender petits gateaux, the way her grandmother made it. Necessity reigns and Madeleine Paulmier was given permission to present her little cakes for dessert. Of course it was a huge success and so la Madeleine was born.

A typical scene at the station of Commercy: young women selling madeleines to travelers. In a poem, Jacques Prévert recalls these little cakes so often bought by the soldiers of Verdun with their last trip. (postcard dated beginning XXth century).

At Commercy, the sign the bell ringer was created by the Colombe family, a line of bakers for over 150 years.From the 1780’s, Claude Colombe used the secret recipe of Madeleine Paulmier.