Mad about Madeleines...

Yesterday I baked some chocolate madeleines to celebrate Giancarlo's (my husband's younger brother) birthday...Madeleines...What is it that makes everybody mad about madeleines? Their sweetness, their airy and buttery softness, their plump shape or their striped-pattern bottom, all that and more perhaps, makes us recollect bits and pieces of our childhood. The sweet potion may evoke whiffs of specific fragrances, a season, a specific place, etc. These random associations are called Correspondances in literature. For the photo, I chose : Thoreau's Walden, Huysmans's A Rebours, and Balzac's La Comédie Humaine, Etudes Philosophiques, volume X).

Of course, not to forget Marcel Proust, and his remembrance of things past...
"And suddenly the memory revealed itself. The taste was that of the little piece of madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray (because on those mornings I did not go out before mass), when I went to say good morning to her in her bedroom , my aunt Léonie used to give me, dipping it first in her own cup of tea or tisane. The sight of the little madeleine had recalled nothing to my mind before I tasted it; perhaps because I had so often seen such things in the meantime, without tasting them, on the trays in pastry-cooks' windows, that their image had dissociated itself from those Combray days to take its place among others more recent; perhaps because of those memories, so long abandoned and put out of mind, nothing now survived, everything was scattered; the shapes of things, including that of the little scallop-shell of pastry, so richly sensual under its severe, religious folds, were either obliterated or had been so long dormant as to have lost the power of expansion which would have allowed them to resume their place in my consciousness. But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, taste and smell alone, more fragile but more enduring, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, remain poised a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unflinchingly, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection."

(in Remembrance of Things Past. Volume 1: Swann's Way: Within a Budding Grove. The definitive French Pléiade edition translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin.)

Honey and Chocolate Madeleines (from Chocolate by Trish Deseine, p58)

Ingredients
5 ounces (140g) best-quality dark chocolate
5 tbspn unsalted butter
5 eggs, separated
1/4 cup honey
1/2 cup sugar
1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour

Makes about 40 small or 20 large cakes
Preparation time: 10 minutes
Chilling time: 1 hour
Cooking time: 8-10 minutes per tray (1 madeleines pan, nonstick if possible)

Preheat the oven to 375*F (200*C).

Melt the chocolate and butter in a microwave oven or in a bowl over hot water and allow to cool.
Beat the egg yolks with the sugar until the mixture is thick and pale. Add the melted chocolate, honey, sugar, and flour, beating the mixture at high speed after each addition.
Whisk the egg whites into soft peaks and fold into the mixture.
Leave the mixture to chill in a refrigerator for at least 1 hour.
If you are using a nonstick pan, there is no need to grease it; otherwise, grease the pan thoroughly.

Use a level teaspoonful of the mixture for small cakes, a heaping teaspoonful for large cakes.
Bake for 8-10 minutes, depending on the size of the cakes. They should have risen slightly on top. Remove from the oven and leave to cool slightly before turning them out.

Now is your turn to go mad! Don't be scared, you won't regret it ;)