Perfect Madeleines

the cookie of my childhood

When I was in preschool my mom would pick me up at noon and we would always go across the street to the Starbucks so she could get her midday caffeine fix and I could get my favorite after school treat. I would watch, barely tall enough to peer over the counter, as the barista took a pair of tongs, grabbed two perfectly golden madeleines from a large glass cookie jar (iykyk) and popped them into a beige and green pastry bag (before everything at Starbuck’s came prepackaged in plastic). I savored those perfect, buttery, vanilla scented, soft but toothsome nuggets with such reverence for how satisfyingly delicious they were. I guess even as a 4 year old the baker in me knew.

Perfecting madeleines at home was a years long journey, a consistent issue I ran into was that my madeleines would always turn out dry but greasy (a standard madeleine batter ratio has something between 60%-75% of butter to other ingredients). Which makes sense for something so small, you’re essentially baking a tablespoon of cake batter at extremely high heat, a dry madeleine seemed inescapable! After tweaking this recipe several times I landed on the perfect madeleine, they bake up consistently whether it’s in a fancy fan oven or your shitty home oven (my home oven is shitty af). And by some miracle these even taste good the next day! The recipe below is for a classic Madeleine, but get creative to your hearts content, the best thing about madeleines are their endless ability to be a canvas for fun flavors.

I really like the USA Pan madeleine molds

just look at that perfect hump!